Xeno, the commerce marketing automation engine, has raised $1.6 million in a seed round from global funds including early Klaviyo backer TJ Mahony’s Vinyl Capital, Ankur Nagpal’s Vibe Capital, Java Capital & Angel Invest Ventures, the company announced on Monday. 

Curefoods founder Ankit Nagori, Mamaearth founder Varun Alagh, Apache Cassandra’s Prashant Malik, CRED’s Kunal Shah & Miten Sampat, Haptik founder Aakrit Vaish, Loginext founder Dhruvil Sanghvi, Profitwheel founder Vivek Bhargava, Fynd founder Farooq Adam, Verlinvest’s Arjun Vaidya, Tracxn founder Abhishek Goyal and several other founders/ operators also participated in the round.

Pranav Ahuja, co-founder & CEO, Xeno said, “At Xeno, we’re on a mission to enable over 100,000 brands to build experiences & marketing specific to an individual customer. This might feel like a solved problem, but it isn’t. Just see the SMS’s you get on your phone. This fundraise, mostly from entrepreneurs who’ve personally experienced this problem, is further validation of our mission.”

Future plans

The start-up plans to utilise the funding to expand its workforce across engineering, product, marketing, sales, and customer success. It is hiring for multiple roles and plans to double its team size in 2022. 

“Our workforce is the engine behind our success, and we are poised to achieve accelerated growth this year owing to the superiority of our platform and our team’s unmatched capabilities. Therefore, a significant portion of the fundraising will be invested in building our team strength,” said Ahuja.

The AI-powered CRM (Customer Relationship Management) platform offers a customer intelligence and engagement engine for D2C brands with an aim to reduce customer acquisition costs, increase website conversions and maximize repeat sales.

“In my opinion, online shopping across industries like beauty, fashion, groceries, essentials, etc., is undergoing a massive shift and 5G will take this to a whole new dimension towards the end of this year. I am delighted that our clients trust us and entirely rely on our expertise to meet their brand vision. As we move ahead, we are excited to deliver data-driven personalised experiences through AI, ML, Big Data, and other emerging technologies,” said Ayushmaan Kapoor, Co-founder & COO, Xeno.

Varun Alagh, co-founder & CEO of Mamaearth said, “The future of retail is omnichannel and the most important metric continues to be driving repeats. As the D2C (direct-to-consumer) space crosses $100 billion by 2025, every brand will require commerce marketing automation solutions to compete & win. This market timing combined with Pranav and Ayushmaan’s deep understanding of the D2C space makes me believe Xeno will build a large company.”

“Xeno caught our eye because the team, architecture, and vision reminded me of when we first invested in Klaviyo... but operating in markets that behave quite differently. Most impressive was the traction and quality of product Xeno established on minimal capital — which are typically hallmarks of exceptional entrepreneurs,” said TJ Mahony, Founder & Partner, Vinyl Capital. 

Jack & Jones, Vero Moda, Forever New, Kama Ayurveda, Colorbar, Apparel Group, SSIPL (Lotto, Sports Station), Kaya Clinic, Barbeque Nation, Amante, Taco Bell, Heads Up For Tails, Chumbak and more customer-first brands are using the platform, Xeno said.

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