PunchTab, the startup led by YouSendIt (now known as Hightail) founder Ranjith Kumaran, is announcing that it has raised $6.25 million in additional funding.
The company started out by helping businesses run promotions and loyalty programs, such as giveaways. More recent products include “second screen” tools for brands that want to reward TV viewers for checking in to a program or tweeting with a brand hashtag.
More broadly, Kumaran told me that the company has become focused on enterprise customers, and on the data that it can provide those customers. (Companies already using PunchTab include Kroger, Arby’s, Nestle, and Harlequin.)
“Loyalty, that’s really a means to an end, to drive better data collection,” he said. With these programs, PunchTab is trying to help businesses “build a 360 degree view of the customer.”
For example, he said many companies have very little insight into customer behavior in physical stores. But with PunchTab, they can create a loyalty or engagement program that collects real-time data by offering users a reward whenever they upload a receipt showing that they purchased a particular brand or product.
The funding round was led by existing investor Mohr Davidow Ventures, and it brings PunchTab’s total funding to $11.5 million. Kumaran said the company will be using the funding, in part, to build up its sales team: “Given the enterprise focus now, it’s a knife fight, especially in the marketing tech enterprise market.”
PunchTab also says that in the first quarter of his year, it saw 400 percent sales growth compared to Q1 2013.
