NextOrbit seeks USD 2m in seed financing
NEXTORBIT SEEKS USD 2M IN SEED FINANCING
TIM LEEMASTER
NextOrbit founder and CEO Kishore Rajgopal
NextOrbit Solutions, the retail inventory management company using AI, is seeking USD 2m in seed financing to ramp up growth, founder and CEO Kishore Rajgopal said.
The Plano, Texas-based company already has a USD 500k commitment from an Indian investor Rajgopal declined to identify.
He hopes to close the round within three months and plans to meet with investors in the US in September.
The company plans to hit New York, Austin, Texas and Silicon Valley.
“Over the next 12-18 months we intend to press the gas on business development,” Rajgopal said.
Current clients include Grocer Exchange, the New York City-based marketing and other services provider to independent supermarkets.
NextOrbit has 12 staff, all of whom are data scientists and machine language engineers.
It is planning to bring in as many as four sales and marketing staff in the United States and as many as eight more data scientists at its site in India.
NextOrbit has generated USD 30k in revenue so far this year and expects to end the year with about USD 75k.
The company focuses on time series and clustering, using neural networks to forecast consumer behavior.
Beyond supermarkets the company is also focused on building clients in the furniture, shoes and luxury goods sectors in smaller cities that find themselves challenged by technology, Rajgopal said.
One of the biggest challenges the company faces with clients can be the initially poor quality of the data they have, Rajgopal said.
The company raised about USD 225k in 2015 in a friends and family funding.