Lee Fixel’s Addition LP has co-led a round of funding for India’s SuperOps.ai, deepening a foray into AI after ChatGPT galvanized a wave of investment in the burgeoning field.
(Bloomberg) — Lee Fixel’s Addition LP has co-led a round of funding for India’s SuperOps.ai, deepening a foray into AI after ChatGPT galvanized a wave of investment in the burgeoning field.
Fixel’s firm and March Capital co-led a Series B round of $12.4 million in which Matrix Partners India participated, the startup said in a statement on Tuesday. That capital infusion brings the total raised by SuperOps.ai, which builds AI services that help smaller companies run IT infrastructure for other enterprises, to nearly $30 million.
SuperOps.ai, which employs about 120 people in the southern city of Chennai, aims to become a big player in the estimated $280 billion global market for managed services. It develops systems that smaller operators such as hospitals, local banks and universities use to manage devices from laptops to printers. It’s a thriving segment of an IT industry now dominated by the likes of Tata Consultancy Services Ltd. and Infosys Ltd., and a market that could surpass $757 billion by 2030, Precedence Research estimates.
“A lot of AI startups are piggy-backing on the ChatGPT wave,” said cofounder and Chief Executive Officer Arvind Parthiban, who established SuperOps.ai in 2020 along with former colleague Jayakumar Karumbasalam. “Lee Fixel told me we should double down quickly, hence this capital-raise.”
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Fixel’s Addition had joined the startup’s Series A capital-raising earlier this year, Parthiban said. The former Tiger Global Management partner has invested in several early-stage AI startups including payments app Satispay SA and OneChronos, which helps investors get into equities. Fixel left Tiger after a run of more than a decade when he backed eventual tech leaders including India’s Flipkart, and established his own outfit in 2019.
SuperOps.ai plans to open a US headquarters in Florida next month. It intends to use the latest round of capital to enhance the AI capabilities of its product, helping clients not just solve but predict client issues. Its latest offering is a ChatGPT-like tool that helps service providers troubleshoot customer complaints and draft more intelligent responses, instead of typing or working off a template.
It’s currently undergoing testing by 50 customers and will roll out to the rest of its 500-strong client base starting November, he said.
“The ChatGPT tool can be directed to adopt particular response tones such as assertive or apologetic,” Parthiban said.
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