Corner, a Software-as-a-Service platform that provides data-driven customer engagement products for D2C ecommerce stores, has raised a funding round led by IAN Fund. With this raise of Rs 50 lakhs, it will start to expand its core engineering and customer success teams and further enhance its product features.

Corner Co-Founders

Arun Augustine co-founded Corner with Jovis Joseph in 2019 at Indian Institute of Management Bangalore during the Startup Launchpad program organized by NSRCEL.

The company is based in Kerala and is incubated by the Kerala StartUp Mission (KSUM), the state nodal agency of Government of Kerala for entrepreneurship development.

With a vision to provide an Intelligent Customer Data Platform (CDP) for D2C ecommerce brands, Corner is committed to transforming customer engagement for this rapidly growing ecommerce segment.

The company caters to brands and online merchants owning their e-commerce stores.

What does Corner do?

Corner provides a data-driven layer to improve customer engagement for such D2C brands. Corner is architecting for fast growth, partnering with platforms like Shopify which has more than 1.75 Million merchants.

Jovis Joseph, Co-Founder, Corner said “Ever since inception, our mission at Corner has been to democratize access to data driven customer intelligence tools for D2C brands. This way they can be competitive with big players like Amazon or Flipkart. With these freshly raised funds, we are looking at strengthening our engineering and customer success teams and accelerating our product roadmap.”

Prior to this, the founders bootstrapped the company, with money raised from family and friends, and leveraged a Rs 7 lakh equity-free grant from the Kerala StartUp Mission (KSUM).

'D2C model witnesses massive uptick in India'

Padmaja Ruparel, Founding Partner, IAN Fund added, “In the past few years, the D2C model has witnessed a massive uptick in India. Many new-age brands have eliminated the middlemen and taken the D2C route. This has enabled brands to reach consumers faster and cater to them more efficiently. Catering to the D2C brands on Shopify, Corner engages their customers with data-driven intelligent solutions. We are glad to be associated with them.”

Expatiating on the fundraise, Kerala Startup Mission commented, “KSUM’s association with Indian Angel Network Fund is very fruitful and the fund is proactively involved in the Kerala Startup ecosystem. We expect IAN will invest more funds in Kerala Startups. The investment in Corner will certainly add value and build confidence to the Investor ecosystem of the state.”