HYDERABAD : Centre of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (CIE-IIITH) Avishkar accelerator program startup Instoried raises $1 million from pre-series A round of investment, with Mumbai Angels leading the round, and follow-on investments from Venture Catalysts’ 9 Unicorns Fund London-based JPIN and others.

The AI-driven content startup has created a tool that helps brands to strategize, execute, and deliver content using predictive analysis to increase customer engagement. The B2B SaaS-based startup helps brands to boost engagement and increase content productivity in real time.

Instoried’s AI tool helps large companies build personal connections with their audiences by using technology to measure the effectiveness of content and rewrite their communication. The company’s approach is data-driven, scalable and measurable with long-lasting, visible results.

Instoried was part of Avishkar’s 5th cohort where CIE-IIITH was instrumental in supporting Instoried with a seed fund of INR 10 lakhs provided strategy and business mentoring. Avishkar is an intensive six-month mentor and research-led program of CIE-IIIT Hyderabad currently running its 11th cohort. A total of Rs 10 lakh is invested in each startup who are part of the cohort. Through the program, Instoried gained access to IIITH’s research labs and received various customer development and mentoring support from CIE’s partners and ecosystem associates.

Commenting on Instoried’s successful funding, Prof. Ramesh Loganathan, CIE-IIITH said, “All our programs target early stage deep-tech startups with potential or need to work with our research.  Instoried is one such startup leveraging NLP for a very interesting usecase around stories. We are very excited to see yet another of our Avishkar accelerator startups gaining good traction and momentum.”

According to Instoried founder Sharmin Ali, “Instoried has grown over 3X in the last 10 months. We found a huge opportunity in this adversity and have scaled at a 60 per cent MOM rate. Brands globally now understand and acknowledge the importance of having a strong online engagement as an absolute mandate with the new normal. This is the best time for marketing tech companies. With the pre-series A raise, we want to hire a larger team and initiate marketing activities globally with a focus on global expansion and increasing our product offerings.”