In a first, Indian Angel Network invests in PR solutions startup Wizikey

 7th May 2019    PR News 
 Paarul Chand

In an unusual move for the angel investor community, Wizikey, a tech solutions PR startup has raised an investment of Rs. 2.5 crores from the Indian Angel Network (IAN). The funding round was led by prominent IAN investors including Alok Mittal formerly MD of Canaan Partners and co-founder & CEO – Indifi Technologies, Ambarish Raghuvanshi, and Saumya Meattle (investor director). Other angels participating in the round include Raman Roy - chairman, NASSCOM; Ajai Chowdhry - co-founder, HCL and Arun Duggal - chairman, ICRA and others.

The PR business in India usually finds it tough to attract investment with angel investors citing scalability of services as a key issue.

Wizikey, however, has raised money to address a major pain point for the PR business, connecting with the right journalist, with the right pitch.

A SaaS-based product, Wizikey, enables businesses to discover relevant journalists, and send information to them via the platform. Using algorithms that help relevant search and targeting, it hopes to address the distribution aspect of PR first, with plans to look at content and analytics later along with ratings for journalists.

The capital infusion will also be used by Wizikey to further develop its product offerings and scaling it to cover multiple vernacular languages, enhancing the platform’s AI and Machine Learning-based capabilities to power its recommendation engine, along with optimizing the quality of content creation. 

The end-goal is to help businesses choose the most relevant journalists for their brands. Wizikey is co-founded by Aakriti Bhargava and Anshul Sushil, SRCC and IIT alum respectively, passionate about bringing technology to communications.

Speaking on the announcement, Aakriti Bhargava, co-founder – Wizikey, said, “Public relations is one of the most potent tools that can help businesses organically garner market credibility and increase consumer mindshare. However, a majority of businesses are shying away from PR, for lack of a transparent and nifty platform. Wizikey was launched to address this exact market gap. We are delighted to have secured funding from prominent IAN investors. With them supporting our growth, we will be able to improve and scale our product and thereby the industry.”

The Wizikey interface allows access to a list of 7,500 leading journalists across the country. 

Speaking on the investment, Alok Mittal, said, “The Indian PR and social media industry is an extremely lucrative market that is ripe for disruption. We are confident that Wizikey has the right mix of industry expertise and tech capabilities to create such a disruption and will emerge as a game-changer in this high-potential market space.”

Saumya Meattle added, “With its unique and innovative services, Wizikey is solving a deep-seated problem in the PR industry, attacks opacity and helps Indian businesses create meaningful engagements with the media fraternity by democratising access.”