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Entropik, Indian Startup That Uses AI To Read User Emotions, Raises Funds

The Bengaluru-based firm raised funds in the round led by Alpha Wave Incubation.

Representative image: A three-dimensional scan of an attendee’s face during the CES Unveiled event in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. (Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg)
Representative image: A three-dimensional scan of an attendee’s face during the CES Unveiled event in Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S. (Photographer: Patrick T. Fallon/Bloomberg)

Entropik Tech, a startup that specialises in facial coding technology to interpret people’s emotion as they watch video and other media, raised $8 million in its fresh funding to strengthen its technology and expand its business.

The Bengaluru-based firm raised funds in the round led by Alpha Wave Incubation, a $300-million venture fund, managed by Falcon Edge Capital and backed by ADQ, one of the largest regional holding companies based in Abu Dhabi, Ranjan Kumar, founder and chief executive officer of Entropik Tech, told BloombergQuint over the phone.

Existing investors such as Bharat Innovation Fund, and IDFC Parampara Fund also participated. The valuation, he said, has grown ninefold with the fresh funding to around $40-50 million.

(L – R) Ranjan Kumar, Founder & CEO, Lava Kumar, Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer, Bharat Singh, Co-Founder & Head of Engineering. (Source; Entropik Tech )

Founded in 2016, the platform uses facial coding, brainwave and eye tracking to interpret the consumers' subconscious and emotional behavior across various touch points for advertising, media testing, audience response and for other research and insights across BFSI, media & entertainment, and telecom, and other sectors.

Kumar said the firm helped companies such as Tata Consumer Ltd. in launching the packaging of their spices and pulses brand, Tata Sampann.
“We helped them increase the uptake of the new product in retails stores by providing insights on pack design, size, and even positioning in the retail stores to boost the demand,” he said.

To help a brand, the firm uses its flagship platform affectlab.io that is embedded with facial coding and eye tracking technologies, and has a panel of more than 50 million people across 110 counties to test the campaigns on the target audience, and provides brands with responses in real time.

“Brands see up to 75% RoI uplift on marketing spends, 16% improvement in customer drop off rate and 35% improvement in customer satisfaction scores,” he said, adding that the firm has about 17 global patent claims on emotion AI technologies.

With the fresh fundraise, the firm now aims to expand its presence to the U.S., EU, Southeast Asia, and also scale to Gulf Cooperation Council, and Middle East and North Africa markets. Part of investment will also go to deepen its AI capabilities, and leverage its current 26 million emotion session data sets to deliver predictive offerings, Kumar said. The firm is eyeing to grab a larger pie of the $30 billion consumer insights industry, he said.

Entropik, with more than 80 enterprise customers, counts P&G, Barclays, Maersk, Accenture, Target among clients.