Exclusive: Prosus leads new round in Detect Technologies

Update: Detect Technologies announced that it has raised $28 million in Series B round in primary and secondary funding. Prosus Ventures led this round with significant participation from existing investors Accel and Elevation Capital, Shell Ventures, Bharat Innovation Fund and Bluehill Capital.  

Original post follows:

Industrial artificial intelligence startup Detect Technologies has initiated a new round in which Prosus Ventures (previously Naspers) has joined as a lead investor while existing investors of the Chennai-based company also participated.

The fresh proceeds have come after a year for Detect Technologies which picked up a $12 million round led by Accel in June last year. The company had raised $3.3 million in Series A led by Elevation in November 2018.

The board at Detect has passed a special resolution to allot 5,518 Series B CCPS at an issue price of Rs 3,53,978.5 per share to raise Rs 195 crore or $25 million, regulatory filings with the Registrar of Companies (ROC) show.

Prosus led the round with Rs 97.66 crore while existing backers Accel, Elevation Capital, Bharat Innovation Fund and Shell Ventures participated with Rs 39 crore, Rs 43 crore, Rs 6.83 crore and Rs 8.78 crore respectively.

Detect Technologies will use the funding for expansion and growth, the company mentioned in the filing.

According to Entrackr’s sources, Detect will close this round at $28 million. We have sent queries to Prosus and Detect for more information and will update the story in case they respond.

After the fresh allotment, Elevation has become the largest shareholder in Detect with 24.3% stake whereas Accel and Prosus will hold 19.2% and 8.9% respectively. The shareholding of the promoter will be diluted to 22.90% from 27.88% post allotment.

As per Fintrackr’s estimates, Detect will be valued at around $140 million post money.

Led by Daniel Raj David, Detect develops solutions for pipeline integrity and management. Its products also help in predictive maintenance of oil & gas pipelines and predict leakages. The company’s current portfolio includes industrial giants such as Shell, Tata Steel, ExxonMobil, and Adani Group.

The company recently entered into a global agreement with Shell to deploy its integrated AI solution T-Pulse across Shell operations.

While Detect is yet to file its annual financial statements for FY22, the company’s revenue from operations increased 4% to Rs 4.67 crore in FY21 from Rs 4.49 crore in FY20. The company controlled its losses by 13% to Rs 6.26 crore in FY21 from Rs 7.21 crore in FY20.