Esper, an India-U.S. based startup that provides a cloud platform for enterprises to manage their dedicated android devices at scale, has announced raising of $7.6 million in a Series A. The round was led by Madrona Venture Group, among others. Madrona, as some of you might be unaware, is an investment fund that participated in Amazon’s Series A funding round back in 1995.
Existing investors Root Ventures, Ubiquity Ventures, Haystack Ventures, and Pathbreaker Ventures also participated in this round. The company plans to deploy this freshly raised greenback for further product development and to expand its customer base in India and the United States. The investment will also aid the expansion of the marketing, sales and engineering teams in Bengaluru.
As mentioned, Esper is a cloud platform that helps enterprises deploy and scale Android dedicated devices and manage applications and devices in real-time. Their full-stack solution enables enterprises to efficiently develop, manage and monitor these devices securely across different versions of Android and device types. These devices range from tablets, point-of-sale devices, mobile payment devices, to kiosks
The company already has a “large” consumer base in India and the US, though specific numbers and clientele wasn’t disclosed in a press release sent to us.
Talking about the next stage for the company, Yadhu Gopalan, CEO and co-founder at Esper says, “We are excited to have the full support of these investors to expand our team and further scale our business to help customers move beyond Mobile Device Management into true device orchestration. ”
The company believes that Android devices are the bringer of the new age of technology. Android’s open-source nature is a big contributor to that. In India, where Android devices make up for around 97% of these deployed devices, the opportunities are endless. Hence, the company is particularly excited about its prospects in the subcontinent.
Shiv Sundar, Co-Founder, and COO, Esper said, “India has been an early adopter of Android devices for enterprise use cases, we have some leading POS, logistics, and retail customers in India who are using Esper to deploy their device fleet. We look forward to utilizing our Series A fundraise to grow our India market share and expand our engineering team in Bengaluru.”
Esper already has partnerships with MediaTek, Lenovo, and Zebra for hardware development and devices. The investment will be used to further develop relationship among companies, which has already worked for/ with the likes of Samsung, Huawei, and Cyanogen, and leading Android-based solutions for Amazon.
With its work in the field, Esper has become one of the most up and coming names in the android device management market. The company’s approach towards business, molding software and devices to impact and improve the human experience worldwide through intense customer focus has resulted in low turnovers, but high customer satisfaction. It can almost be interpreted as the company burning through cash for customer acquisition.
