One Line Pitch: Zakta is the world’s first Social Curation and Intelligence Platform.
Business Summary: Zakta Social Curation and Intelligence Platform (SCIP) offers
easy, intuitive functionality that allows applications to offer content curation and
smart search by harnessing the power of trusted social networks – called Social
Intelligence. Zakta powered applications range from Innovation Management,
Education, Research, Sales, Legal and other markets. Zakta combines cutting edge
social search technologies with curation and collaboration to deliver unique value.
Management: Describe the background and experience of key team members.
The Zakta team has extensive experience (over 70 person-years) in building large
scale, successful commercial solutions in the areas of search, text mining, text
analytics, social media, and social networking. Founders’ prior venture, Intelliseek,
is touted as one of the biggest successes in IT startups in the Cincinnati area delivered a 5X+ returns shareholders through an enterprise search business (now
part of SAP) and social media monitoring and measurement business (now part of
The Nielsen Company, called Nielsen-Buzzmetrics / nmIncite).
Customer Problem: Even the more progressive enterprises which have embraced
“social” in their business strategy are missing the more powerful notion of
leveraging “social intelligence”, i.e. the collective expertise/ wisdom of their own
teams to gain market advantage. This issue cuts across business functions in
today’s information-powered economy.
Product /Services: Zakta’s SCIP, is delivered as platform in the Cloud for
application and solution providers. The company has built various cutting-edge
consumer-facing apps based on the platform as examples, e.g. SearchTeam.com.
Zakta LLC
Company Profile:
URL: Zakta.com
Industry: Information Technology
FTE: 7
Founded: 2007
Contact
Name Sundar Kadayam
Email skadayam@zaktallc.com
Phone 513-708-1910
Management Team:
Mahendra Vora, Chairman
Sundar Kadayam, CEO
Mark Reed, CTO
Paul D’Souza, SVP, Business
Development
Investors:
Vora Ventures
Cincytech
The SOCC Fund
Angel Investors
Target Market: Application and solution providers in the Innovation
Management, Research, Sales, Marketing, HR, Legal, Education and other markets.
Customers: Flagship clients include inno360 (innovation management), and OMNI
(regional / statewide innovation hub).
Sales/Marketing Strategy: Develop channel and OEM partners in key target markets.
Business Model: Usage based utilities fees – paid as royalties for the license fees plus customization fees, if any.
Competitors: None as a platform. Many homegrown point applications exist that offer fractions of SCIP capabilities.
Competitive Advantage: First mover with a truly scalable Cloud-based platform approach to the hot “Curation” and “Social
Intelligence” markets using SCIP, built over 3+ years. 3 patents pending for protection of core innovations including
collaborative search and curation, and topical trust networks.
Funding Strategy: Describe your funding strategy, how much money you are seeking now and in later rounds, and how
investors will realize a return on their investment. Zakta is a lean startup funded primarily by Vora Ventures and CincyTech.
Company seeks to raise $1M - $3M to support the growth and expansion of its sales and business development activities.. Zakta
expects to be profitable in 2012, with rapid growth over the subsequent years.