AN investors Alok Mittal (Co-founder & CEO – Indifi Technologies), Ambarish Raghuvanshi (Former CFO – Info Edge), and Saumya Meattle (Investor Director – IAN) led the funding round
Other investors include prominent names like Ajai Chowdhry and Arun Duggal
Underlining its commitment to nurturing start-ups with domain-defining potential, Indian Angel Network, the single largest horizontal seed stage platform in India, has recently invested INR 2.5 crore in Wizikey, a tech-driven PR solutions start-up. IAN’s investment in Wizikey marks a significant step towards transforming the Indian PR and social media industry, which is estimated to be valued at INR. 4,500 crore.
The funding round was led by prominent IAN investors including Alok Mittal, Ambarish Raghuvanshi, and Saumya Meattle (Investor Director). Other angels participating in the round include Raman Roy – Chairman, NASSCOM; Ajai Chowdhry – Cofounder, HCL and Arun Duggal – Chairman, ICRA and others.
Wizikey is a SaaS-based product that enables businesses to discover relevant journalists, and send information to them via the platform. Using algorithms that help relevant search and targeting, it brings high levels of efficiency in PR management. Further a company can maintain record all their announcement activity, maintain brand collaterals on the platform for easy reference, and monitor response.
The capital infusion will be used by Wizikey to further develop its product offerings and scaling it to cover multiple vernacular languages. The funding will also be used for enhancing the platform’s AI and Machine Learning-based capabilities to power its recommendation engine, along with optimizing the quality of content creation. The end-goal is to help businesses choose the most relevant journalists for their brands. Wizikey is co-founded by Aakriti Bhargava and Anshul Sushil, SRCC and IIT alum respectively, passionate about bringing technology to communications.
Speaking on the announcement, Aakriti Bhargava, Co-founder – Wizikey, said, “Public relations is one of the most potent tools that can help businesses organically garner market credibility and increase consumer mindshare. However, a majority of businesses are shying away from PR, for lack of a transparent and nifty platform. Wizikey was launched to address this exact market gap. We are delighted to have secured funding from prominent IAN investors. With them supporting our growth, we will be able to improve and scale our product and thereby the industry.”
The easy-to-use Wizikey interface allows access to a list of 7,500 leading journalists across the country. Using the platform’s convenient search driver, companies can shortlist pertinent journalists based on relevant keywords related to their businesses, industry or even competition, such as “E-commerce”, “Retail” or “Amazon”.
Speaking on the investment, Alok Mittal , said, “The Indian PR and social media industry is an extremely lucrative market that is ripe for disruption. We are confident that Wizikey has the right mix of industry expertise and tech capabilities to create such a disruption and will emerge as a game-changer in this high-potential market space.”
Saumya Meattle and Ambarish Raghuvanshi added, “With its unique and innovative services, Wizikey is solves a deep seated problem in the PR industry, attacks opacity and helps Indian businesses create meaningful engagements with the media fraternity by democratising access.”