September 27, 2012
Social CRM Company Capillary Technologies Raises $15.5 Million in Series A Funding
By Ashok Bindra
TMCnet Contributor
Capillary Technologies, a social CRM company that helps retailers engage over mobile, e-mail, social and in-store channels, announced that it has raised about $15.5 million in series A funding led by Sequoia Capital and Norwest Venture Partners. Existing investor Qualcomm (News - Alert) Ventures also participated in this round.
The company, which offers a cloud-based SaaS platform for customer engagement, loyalty and social CRM solutions, currently works with over 100 major brands across 10,000 stores worldwide. The company recently entered the U.S. market.
According to the company release, Capillary’s customers include industry leaders such as Pizza Hut, Puma, Robinson’s, United Colors of Benetton, Mothercare, Store21, Sunglass Hut and Nike. The company claims that these marquee retailers have realized as much as a 10 percent increase in same-store sales by leveraging Capillary’s solution, which combines frictionless consumer enrollment, back-end analytics and campaign management to drive consumer engagement across every major channel, including in-store, mobile, e-mail and social.
Capillary co-founder Krishna Mehra, who is also president of the American division, said, “Trying to engage with customers is a difficult thing.”
“ The existing mechanisms to capture customer data and interact with customers through plastic cards, and all these things, are very sub-optimal. Most systems, even punch cards, don’t really capture a lot of quality customer data. That’s something we solve very well,” added Mehra.
Continuing, Mehra said, “What makes the system a big draw for brands, is its ability to integrate with hundreds of different point-of-sale systems, as well as the software’s real-time nature which is able to identify customers immediately after sign-up – often while they’re still in the store.”
“[Real-time is] the big differentiator we have from most other social CRM solutions – it’s very deeply linked into the CRM,” the co-founder said.
Capillary will be using the additional funds to grow U.S. customer base, where it is currently conducting trials with several undisclosed brands and expanding the sales force.
Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO Austin 2012, taking place Oct. 2-5, in Austin, TX. Stay in touch with everything happening at ITEXPO (News - Alert). Follow us on Twitter.
Edited by Brooke Neuman