Rata Tata invests in analytics firm Infinite Analytics

Tata Group chairman emeritus Ratan Tata is expanding his reach to new areas of business with the investment of an unspecified amount in the US-based Infinite Analytics, a predictive data analytics firm from MIT, with sales operations in India.

"We have received funding from Tata to expand our predictive analytics technology to verticals beyond retail and e-commerce," the company said in a statement from Boston.

The three-year-old data analytics firm plans to expand its predictive analytics technology to segments beyond retail and ecommerce.

Existing investors like Nikhil Vora of Sixth Sense Ventures and new investors from Silicon Valley and India have also participated in this round.

The company claims to be an offspring of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) class of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web.

Since its inception in 2012, Infinite Analytics has raised a seed round from various investors across the globe in Australia, Taiwan, India, the UK and the USA. It is also backed by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the world wide web, and Deb Roy, chief media scientist at Twitter, who are advisors and investors in the company.

The company specialises in deep machine learning and predictive analytics. Its analytics platform merges data from multiple sources (customer demographic data, transactions data, loyalty programme data, third party data, open data) to create a 360-degree view of the user.

"It's a dream come true to have Mr. Tata back us. We have grown up admiring and respecting Mr.Tata's business acumen and this is a great opportunity for us to learn from him directly. His guidance and vision will definitely help us grow Infinite Analytics into an analytics powerhouse," said Akash Bhatia, co-founder & CEO, Infinite Analytics.

"We are honoured to have Tata as an investor and advisor. We share a common vision about how technology can be used to solve difficult problems in industry and society," said Infinite's co-founder and chief technology officer Purushotham Botla.

Infinite's customer list includes AirBnB, Comcast, B2W Digital, BabyOye, Croma Retail, eBay, Future Group, Infibeam, NBA, NDTV Retail, Trendin and Tata Marketplace among others.

The company plans to use the additional investment to beef up hiring, scale up in current verticals and to explore newer verticals.