Capillary Technologies, a leading provider of cloud-based software solutions that help retailers to intelligently engage with customers through mobile, social and in-store channels, today announced that it has closed a $15.5 million Series A round of venture financing led by Sequoia Capital and Norwest Venture Partners (NVP). Existing investor Qualcomm Ventures also participated in the round. Mohan Kumar of NVP and Shailesh Lakhani of Sequoia have joined Capillary's board of directors. Capillary will use the capital infusion to expand to the U.S. market and further its presence in South East Asia, Europe, Middle East and Africa. Capillary will also enhance its product portfolio to meet the needs of a broad range of retailers worldwide.

Capillary's cloud-based platform powers end-to-end customer engagement, clienteling, loyalty and social CRM solutions for more than 100 major brands across 10,000 stores-serving over 50 million consumers - in the United Kingdom, United States, South East Asia, Greater China, India, the Middle East and South Africa. Capillary's customers include industry leaders such as Pizza Hut, Puma, Robinson's, United Colors of Benetton, Mothercare, Store21, Sunglass Hut and Nike. These marquee retailers have realized as much as a 10% increase in same-store sales by leveraging Capillary's solution, which combines frictionless consumer enrollment, back-end analytics and campaign management to drive consumer engagement across every major channel, including in-store, mobile, e-mail and social.

"We see an enormous global market for our solutions. This funding round validates our vision of enabling retailers to harness the power of the cloud, predictive analytics and new mobile and social channels to drive sales and profits through customer engagement," said Aneesh Reddy, co-founder and CEO of Capillary Technologies. "Both Sequoia and Norwest have amazing track records in helping to build significant companies-particularly in the big data and analytics sectors. We're looking forward to working with both firms as we invest further in our team and platform, expand aggressively into major global markets, and take our company to the next level."

Capillary's patent-pending cloud platform integrates everything that retail marketers and operators require to engage with their customers, weaving social and mobile experiences into virtually any point-of-sale device, from legacy terminals to the latest POS devices and mobile tablets. Capillary's suite of Intelligent Customer Engagement™ solutions offers real-time, high-quality data capture, actionable analytics, instant cross-sell solutions and instant shopper gratification to generate significant ROI within weeks of implementation.

"We have been extremely impressed with the significant number of customers that Capillary has signed up in a relatively short period of time. Capillary's ability to marry 'social', 'local' and 'mobile' with robust behind-the scenes analytics is delivering tremendous value to a wide range of retailers across a number of categories," said Promod Haque, managing partner, Norwest Venture Partners. "Capillary is helping these customers drive dramatic same-store sales increases - in some cases close to 10% - and has an enormous opportunity to expand its offerings globally in what is still a hugely untapped market."

By combining big data with a robust, cloud-based analytics engine, Capillary optimizes the relevance and profitability of discounts and personalized offers to consumers in real time, significantly increasing both loyalty and sales. A retailer can engage customers while in store via their mobile phones and encourage additional purchases while the customer is still on premise. Capillary's platform also allows retailers to integrate social media at the point of sale, giving it a competitive advantage over other companies in the loyalty space.

"Capillary has demonstrated that it can scale up successfully and profitably by focusing on a segment that has been underserved by other more expensive and complex solutions," said Shailesh Lakhani, Managing Partner, Sequoia Capital. "We really like the strength of Capillary's solution for retailers and its ability to deliver immediate business results. We are happy to partner with the company in this next crucial phase of its growth."

Capillary has changed the way conventional retailers look at data-driven marketing. "At Capillary we have developed an outstanding software suite delivering Intelligent Customer Engagement, that allows our customers to increase sales in-store and on-line through the creation and communication of real-time, personalized offers. Our SaaS model means that we get our customers live within weeks of engagement, then allow them to focus on making decisions about optimizing sales, rather than worrying about managing and maintaining a software suite. Our message is simple: our customers make money from using our solution within 2-3 months of starting to work with us. Not many other companies can promise that," concludes Krishna Mehra, Co-founder, CTO and President, Americas for Capillary.

About Capillary Technologies

Capillary Technologies is a leading provider of cloud-based software solutions that help retailers to intelligently engage with customers through mobile, social and in-store channels. Capillary's cloud-based platform powers end-to-end customer engagement, clienteling, loyalty and social CRM solutions for more than 100 major brands across 10,000 stores bringing instant shopper gratification to over 50 million consumers across the United States, United Kingdom, South East Asia, Greater China, the Middle East, South Africa and India. The company is the recipient of numerous awards and was most recently named to the Red Herring Asia Top 100 Companies of 2012. Capillary is backed by prominent venture capital investors including Sequoia Capital, Norwest Venture Partners and Qualcomm Ventures. Visit http://www.capillarytech.com for more details.

About Sequoia Capital

Sequoia Capital in India currently manages funds capitalized at close to US $1.4 billion and invests across venture, growth and late stage opportunities. It takes a long term view on investments and plays the role of an active, value added partner to entrepreneurs, business families and management teams. Over the last six years, Sequoia Capital has invested in more than 60 Indian companies including Café Coffee Day, Druva, Idea Cellular, Just Dial, Mu Sigma, Paras Pharma, Prizm Payments, Quickheal and Vasan Eye Care. Sequoia Capital in India operates out of offices in Bangalore, Mumbai and New Delhi.

Globally, Sequoia Capital has an unparalleled track record of partnering with entrepreneurs to create global market leaders. Sequoia Capital has been an early investor in companies such as Google, Cisco, Yahoo, YouTube, Oracle, Linkedin, Dropbox and Apple Computers. Sequoia Capital maintains dedicated teams in the US, China, India and Israel.

To learn more about Sequoia Capital visit: http://www.sequoiacap.com/india

About Norwest Venture Partners (NVP)

Norwest Venture Partners (NVP) is a multi-stage investment firm that has partnered with entrepreneurs to build great businesses for more than 50 years. The firm manages over $3.7 billion in capital and has funded more than 500 companies since inception. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, NVP has subsidiaries in Mumbai and Bengaluru, India and Herzelia, Israel and Hong Kong. NVP makes early to late stage venture and growth equity investments across a wide range of sectors including: information technology, business services, financial services, infrastructure, technology-enabled services and consumer. For more information visit: http://www.nvp.com.