India, June 30, 2021 – Detect Technologies, India’s fast growing “Industrial AI” company, announced today that it raised $12 Mn in funding to enhance industrial productivity globally and strengthen its leadership in accelerating digitization of the industrial sector. Accel led this round with significant participation from existing investor Elevation Capital, and continued support from other existing investors—Bharat Innovation Fund, BlueHill Capital, and Axilor Ventures. Stride Ventures also participated as a venture debt partner.
The company will utilize this capital to further expand and strengthen its sales and operations teams across India and international markets in North and South America, Singapore, Indonesia, Middle East, and Europe and to fulfil the accelerating demand for industrial automation. Part of the funds will also be deployed for R&D and product innovation to strengthen Detect’s lead in industrial AI and IoT. Since its inception in 2016, Detect Technologies has grown rapidly to become a leading industrial AI and SaaS enterprise, improving industrial productivity and ensuring continuous industrial uptime.
With the global pandemic and subsequent lockdowns, industrial companies have been eager to adopt automation solutions for enhanced productivity with minimal human interventions. Consequently, Detect’s client portfolio has grown from 25+ to over 45 companies, and its solutions have been implemented in 100+ individual sites globally. The company has also expanded into 6 new international territories within 10 months—a testimony to recurring client preferences and strong references in the industrial landscape. Its current portfolio includes prominent industrial giants, such as Shell, Tata Steel, ExxonMobil, Adani Group, Reliance, and several Fortune 500 companies. These span across sectors such as oil and gas, petrochemicals, construction, steel, metals, chemicals, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, power, renewables, and cement.
“Despite initiatives towards industrial automation and digitization, large conglomerates have seen limited success in generating tangible value on site. Industrial processes today are siloed and need significant human intervention, which is subject to error. The pandemic accelerated the adoption of automation, leading to large-scale disruption in industrial technology,” said Daniel Raj David, CEO and Co-founder of Detect Technologies.
“Our team seized this opportunity to spearhead industrial transformation and has achieved operational excellence with prominent industrial players. Detect’s rapid revenue growth and global expansion reflect its ability to innovate and continuously deliver,” he added.
Commenting on the funding, Barath Shankar Subramanian, Partner, Accel, said, “The industrial sector loses millions globally in revenue due to unplanned shutdowns, a result of lack of intelligent real-time data and insights to aid decision making. Detect is operating in this $200 Bn+ market opportunity of industrial automation and real-time analytics to increase visibility over operations, the health of equipment, and the safety of workers. At Accel, we believe that the Detect team is well equipped to solve this problem, and we are excited to partner with them.”
With its proprietary technologies, including global patents, copyrights, and trademarks, as well as demonstrated on-ground ROI across safety, reliability, maintenance, and operational teams, Detect Technologies has received global software approvals from reputed enterprises. Its solutions comply with industrial safety standards and have received the rigorous ATEX certification to successfully implement its solutions in hazardous and explosive environments.
“Detect Technologies has emerged as an industry pioneer as the world moves towards Industry 4.0. Their products have led to higher schedule certainty, enhanced resource visibility, reduced equipment failure, increased asset life, and lesser downtime. We remain extremely excited about Detect’s potential to redefine digitization and automation across industries; and have thus deepened our partnership in the current round”, said Mridul Arora, Partner, Elevation Capital.
Detect Technologies prides itself on delivering impact through its wide portfolio of industrial AI and IoT offerings. T-Pulse™, for instance, is an end-to-end industrial project management solution that optimizes shutdowns, turnarounds, daily operations, and construction processes. Built to provide safe, compliant, and efficient management of industrial projects and turnarounds, its deployment has resulted in multimillion dollars’ worth of savings. Other cutting-edge solutions include GUMPS™ (a long-range IoT sensor for real-time pipeline integrity monitoring at high temperatures that predicts pipe failure in advance), and Noctua.AI™ (an enterprise AI solution to optimize plant and asset performance holistically).
Apoorva Sharma, Partner, Stride Venture, added, “Detect is a pioneer in asset integrity monitoring and predictive maintenance. The team has partnered with all the significant oil and gas companies in the sector and built innovative and cutting-edge solutions. We are thrilled to be associated with thought leaders like Detect Technologies and support them with our structured debt solutions.”
About Detect Technologies
Detect Technologies is an India-based enterprise tech SaaS company that creates unique platforms powered by deep-tech – novel AI architecture and hardware. Detect employs a combination of state-of-the-art proprietary technologies and deep industrial expertise to increase overall industrial productivity through increased schedule certainty, enhanced resource visibility through real-time intelligent monitoring, decreased in-service equipment failure, and increased estimated life of an asset through predictive maintenance and automation of compliance to standards. They serve 10 key industries – oil and gas, petrochemicals, steel, metals, chemicals, fertilizers, pharmaceuticals, power, renewables, and cement, among others. Long-term engagements in marquee customer sites within India including RIL, BPCL, IOCL, HPCL, CPCL, Nayara Energy, Tata Steel, DRL, Adani, Coromandel, and Asian Paints, among others.
About Accel
Accel is a global venture capital firm that is the first partner to exceptional teams everywhere, from inception through all phases of private company growth. Accel has been operating in India since 2008, and its investments include companies like BookMyShow, Browserstack, Flipkart, Freshworks, FalconX, Chargebee, Clevertap, Cure Fit, Musigma, Moneyview, Myntra, Moglix, Swiggy, Stanza Living, Urban Company and Zenoti, among many others. We help ambitious entrepreneurs build iconic global businesses.
About Elevation Capital
Elevation Capital is a leading venture capital firm which provides seed and early-stage capital for emerging companies in India. Founded in 2002, Elevation is currently investing out of its seventh fund, and has over $2 Bn under management. The fund is led by Managing Partner Ravi Adusumalli, along with five Partners Deepak Gaur, Mukul Arora, Mridul Arora, Vivek Mathur, and Mayank Khanduja. The firm has a portfolio of over 100 companies across the internet, SaaS, consumer, financial services, and logistics sectors. Elevation has been an early investor and partner to founders of category-defining companies, such as Acko, FirstCry, Justdial, MakeMyTrip, Meesho, NoBroker, Paytm, ShareChat, Swiggy, Unacademy, and Urban Company.
About Stride Ventures
Stride Ventures is focused on providing tailor-made debt solutions to growth-stage companies in India and enabling them to strategically allocate capital. The fund has invested in close to 30 companies and has been one of the most active venture lenders in India since 2019. Bringing more than six years of venture lending and strong thirty-year banking industry experience, the fund helps its portfolio companies leverage the banking ecosystem through their domain expertise and extensive network.