Bengaluru: Blueshift Labs Inc., a marketing automation solutions provider, on Tuesday announced that it had closed an $8 million Series A round of funding led by Storm Ventures, with participation from existing investor Nexus Venture Partners, to accelerate sales and marketing.

The California-based company previously raised $2.6 million in seed funding from New Enterprise Associates and Nexus Venture Partners in November 2014.

Anshu Sharma of Storm, who worked at Salesforce, has joined the Blueshift board.

Blueshift allows marketers to customise their messages based on customers’ interests, purchase patterns and browsing behaviour, thus increasing engagement.

Blueshift said it will also use its funds to continue building its proprietary Interaction Graph platform which stores each user’s stream of interactions with products or content.

“Storm Ventures has previously backed many of the leading companies in marketing technology and SaaS (software as a service), and we are especially thrilled with the confidence they have placed in us as we enter our next phase of growth,” said Vijay Chittoor, co-founder and chief executive officer of Blueshift in a statement.

“At Salesforce, I saw first-hand the challenges enterprise customers experienced in delivering personalized, relevant messages to consumers who are increasingly tuning out. Blueshift has built a unique segment of one marketing platform by leveraging the very latest innovations in big data and machine learning—built by a team of seasoned marketing practitioners. We think this is the future of all marketing automation,” said Sharma.

Blueshift’s founders previously worked at companies such as Kosmix (now WalmartLabs) and Mertado (now Groupon Goods).

[“source-Livemint”]