Bengaluru- and Delaware-based Synup Inc., which helps local businesses manage their web presence with its SaaS-based solutions, has raised $6 million (Rs 39 crore) in a Series A round led by Vertex Ventures and existing investor Prime Venture Partners.
The company will use the money for product development and to expand its sales and marketing initiatives, Synup said in a press note.
Synup’s offers local marketing solutions for businesses to manage their location data, presence, reputation and analytics. It also tracks business profiles and monitors interactions to provide automated marketing solutions to help businesses control their digital assets, monitor customer feedback, improve online presence, and get real-time insights.
The company works with digital agencies and offline businesses to manage their listings across over 50 local search destinations. It claims to have assisted over 50,000 local businesses so far.
Synup also wants to add to its team of 40 to expand to Europe and the UK by mid-2018. “Synup has been able to solve a difficult problem in a market that is largely underpenetrated. Their strong early customer traction is a testament to the efficacy of their approach to address this massive market opportunity,” said Ben Mathias, managing partner, Vertex Ventures.
Synup had raised $500,000 in a seed round led by Prime Venture Partners in August 2014.
The company was founded in mid-2013 by Ashwin Ramesh, besides Mohan Gopalakrishnan, the incumbent CEO, and Karthik Krishnamoorthy, the CTO.
Ashwin turned an entrepreneur when he was just 15, by starting his own back-end online marketing and web services firm Ebusiness Initiative. He then went on to build OrganicApex, a digital marketing firm, which deals with web services, products, properties and more.
Gopalakrishnan had stints in Oracle and Sybase, besides serving as the country manager at Symantec for its engineering and operations verticals. Krishnamoorthy was a director at Cap Gemini before setting up Synup.
Synup competes with global online digital marketing services such as New York-based Yext and Seattle-based Moz.
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