Kolkata’s iMerit gets funding to expand data annotation business
Posted on 25 February 2020
Kolkata-based deeptech start-up iMerit Technology Services has raised $20 Mn in Series B funding round led by the development finance institution CDC Group, which is owned by the UK government. Existing investors of iMerit also participated in the funding round. Prior to this, the company had raised undisclosed amounts from Omidyar Network. Michael and Susan Dell Foundation and Khosla Impact have also invested in iMerit.
With the new funds, the company is planning to hire more employees and aims to more than triple its workforce from the current 3K employees to 10K employees. Besides India, the start-up also operates in the US and Bhutan. The company will also invest in enhancing innovation for the company’s proprietary AI platform.
Founded in 2012, iMerit provides an artificial intelligence-powered platform which offers data annotation and labelling services. The platform converts information into data sets which enables its clients to improve their machine learning capabilities, computer vision, natural language understanding, and data analytics capabilities. The company also leverages data points to enhance innovations in advancing cancer cell research, optimising crop yields, and training driverless cars.
The company has partnered with Intel, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud, Labelbox, and Figure Eight to enhance its AI platform. It claims that it has around 100 global clients including TripAdvisor, eBay, Microsoft, Autodesk among others. The company also claims to be profitable for the last two years.