Bengaluru: Instoried, the only AI-powered pre-publication sentiment analysis tool that enhances content performance in real-time, has raised $8M in funding from Pritt Investment Partners and 9Unicorns with participation from Mumbai Angels, Venture Catalysts Angel Fund, SOSV and a few HNIs. The funds will be used to further strengthen tech stack, enter newer geographies and expand the team and operations.
Instoried turns traditional content performance tracking software on its head, delivering real-time sentiment analysis at the point of content creation to ensure performance ahead of publication. Instoried uses OpenAI’s GPT-3 technology along with in-house built proprietary AI to enable enterprises to reach their optimal content goals. The product offering includes both content evaluation and creation, some of the features being short form content generation, emotional quotient analysis, grammar check, plagiarism check, headline analysis, tonality check and panel testing. Instoried’s tool suggests smart recommendations that create content to resonate and strike a chord with customers. This leads to boosting engagement and increasing content productivity, all in real-time using AI. Instoried has built web apps and APIs to help integrate the tool onto any platform and it sells licenses of the tool. The company has over 120K users in just 2 months. Instoried has seen customers increase lead generation 3-fold and double content ROI within 6 months of using the tool.
Using Bandler’s neuro-linguistic programming (NLP) approach as a foundation, Instoried has tagged millions of lines of text with emotion and tone across all types of genres including business, health, politics and social media. The startup’s team of in-house linguists then annotate the text for context and semantics, providing the essential human understanding of tone from which their proprietary AI can learn. In simple terms, the tool can analyse content of any type or length to determine whether it is ‘any good’ insofar as it will achieve the goals of the content writer. Where content needs improvement to achieve these goals, Instoried provides real-time instructions for enhancing the copy to achieve optimal results.
Instoried was founded in 2019 by Sharmin Ali. Sutanshu Raj joined as CTO and was later co-opted as a co-founder. Sharmin is both a published author and seasoned content creator having founded other companies in the media industry during her career. This insider insight inspired her mission to help businesses who have adopted content as a key driver in their marketing plan to stop “flying blind” when it comes to predicting content success. The Instoried team comes with rich experience in tech, product and marketing expertise.
Sharmin Ali, Founder & CEO, Instoried, said, “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 one year. We are now looking at scaling operations in the US. This fundraise 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.”
Scott Tripp, Director of People, Standards, and Results at Pritt Investment Partners commented, “Pritt Investment Partners has been focused intently on investing in companies that have a strong product, management team, market in which to grow, and a solid plan for growth and favorable returns in the future. We believe we have found this in Instoried and Sharmin Ali. Instoried has successfully developed a SaaS based deep-tech platform that helps enterprises and individuals create emotionally engaging content, thereby improving return on investment (ROI) for marketing efforts and campaigns. As the digital marketing industry continues to grow we believe Instoried is well positioned with their product to take advantage of this opportunity and quickly penetrate the market. We are excited and proud to be a lead investor in the company and look forward to seeing the continued rapid growth of the company. This is only the beginning. Well done Sharmin and team!”
“Instoried with its deep-tech tools have ensured that it analyses content so that companies can reach out to their target audience effectively and on time. We are quite optimistic about Instoried’s growth in the global content tech market that is likely to touch $400 billion in the next two years. Sharmin and her team are well equipped to emerge as leaders in this segment and we are excited to be a part of their growth story” added Dr. Apoorv Ranjan Sharma, Co-founder & Director, 9Unicorns.
Instoried has previously raised $2M from investors including SOSV, Artesian Investments, Mumbai Angels, 9Unicorns, Venture Catalysts, Rockstud Capital. Instoried has received constant support from Censie Capital investment banking partners in their fundraising journey.
