Course5 Intelligence announces second close of $53 million funding round

Course5 Intelligence, an analytics and AI solutions company, on Tuesday announced today the second close of its funding round at $53 million, led by Nuvama Asset Management. The round also saw participation from Carnelian Asset Advisors.

This funding follows the first close led by 360 ONE Asset Management, formerly IIFL Asset Management, in May this year.

Course5 said that the funding will be used to create a war chest of around $80 million, supplemented by the company’s own cash reserves and accruals, to fuel its mergers and acquisitions (M&A) “in complementary assets and deeptech start-ups.”

“The data and AI revolution is finally here and the scope and scale of AI deployments across global enterprises are going to rapidly increase in the coming years,” said Ashwin Mittal, Chairman and CEO of Course5 Intelligence.

“Recent advances in Generative AI, natural language and computer perception have completely removed the boundaries of what is possible. We want to ensure we maintain our leadership position amongst AI & Analytics solution providers by adding strategically to our portfolio to maximize our value proposition to global corporates,” he added.

Course5 Intelligence has a structured M&A agenda, looking at synergistic assets in the US, the UK and India, each in the range of $10 million to $20 million in revenue. The firm recently absorbed Incivus, an AI-based Ad creation and optimization technology startup.

ICICI Securities and JM Financial acted as the exclusive financial advisors to the company.

“Increase in complexity, type and usage of data across the world and significant advancement in technologies including AI is driving adoption of data driven intelligence through enterprises like never before across the globe. We see this as a structural long-term trend, and strongly believe that Course5 is very well-placed to benefit from this wave of acceleration,” said Pranav Parikh, Managing Partner, Nuvama Private Equity.

Course5 is currently in talks with five companies and plans to complete two acquisitions over a period of 12 months. In addition to mergers and acquisitions, Course5 plans to use the investor funds for further innovation in specific areas of applied AI such as deep learning, computer perception, natural language, and Generative AI via Course5’s AI Labs.

“Data Analytics and AI is a big revolution ahead of us and growing at a rapid pace transforming and disrupting businesses. Course5 is well placed to capture this huge opportunity over the next decade,” added Vikas Khemani, Founder, Carnelian Asset Advisors.