AI-based startup Instoried has raised $8 million in its latest funding round, led by Pritt Investment Partners and 9Unicorns, and included participation from Mumbai Angels, Venture Catalysts Angel Fund, SOSV, and other HNIs.

According to the startup, the proceeds from the funding round would be utilized towards strengthening its technology stack, expanding into new markets, and scaling up its teams and operations.

Founded by Sharmin Ali, who happens to be a graduate of the Visvesvaraya Institute of Technology in Bengaluru (Sutanshu Raj joined as CTO and was later co-opted as a co-founder), the two-year-old startup helps content writers, in the SME category, e-commerce, FMCG, and other verticals to optimize emotions in their marketing content. It offers content creation and evaluation, using in-house built proprietary artificial intelligence (AI) to enable enterprises to reach their optimal content goals and make real-time analyses and suggestions to enhance the content, which will, in turn, increase engagement.

It uses the principles of neuromarketing in order to offer smart recommendations and other features such as short-form content generation, emotional quotient analysis, grammar check, plagiarism check, headline analysis, tonality check, and panel testing, and has garnered over 1, 20, 000 users in just two months.

“With all brands selling online and the world going virtual, we were able to identify a huge opportunity in this adversity (pandemic time) and have grown 50X in the last year. We are now looking at scaling operations in the US. This fundraiser will help us go to market, build a strong team in the US and add more product offerings to our existing portfolio. We are thrilled to have Pritt Investment Partners on board this content tech journey,” said Sharmin Ali, Founder & CEO, Instoried.

The startup claims to be the only AI-powered pre-publication sentiment analysis tool that enhances content performance in real-time, and its web apps and APIs help integrate its tool onto any platform. It improves its ROI by aiding enterprises and individuals in creating emotionally engaging content.