Atlan raises Rs 18 crore in Series A funding led by WaterBridge Ventures

Atlan has raised Rs 18 crore in Series A funding, led by WaterBridge Ventures. It counts Ratan Tata and Rajan Anandan among existing investors.
Atlan’s products helps teams in large enterprises collaborate seamlessly on data projects by truly democratizing data, both internal and external, while automating repetitive tasks.
The company works with more than 200 corporations globally, including Unilever, GroupM, Mahindra Group, Kotak Mahindra Bank and InMobi.
“To win with data, diverse individuals such as engineers, data scientists and business users need to collaborate effectively. We are building the glue — the collaboration layer — for these diverse teams, to make them more agile and efficient,” said Prukalpa Sankar, co-founder of Atlan.
“Just as HubSpot created a home for marketing teams and GitHub created a home for engineering teams, we are creating a home for data teams,” she said.
The company plans to invest the latest funds in expanding globally and leadership hires.
“We are reimagining every human interaction with data. For instance, code has a profile on GitHub — what would a “profile” of data look like? Or what would a data versioning and approval workflow look like?” said Varun Banka, co-founder of Atlan.
Atlan was founded in 2018 by Prukalpa Sankar and Varun Banka. The duo also founded SocialCops, a data intelligence startup behind projects including India’s National Data Platform, global SDG monitoring in partnership with the United Nations, and gas subsidy program PM Ujjwala Yojana.
It was while working on these projects that they discovered the friction that data teams face, leading to the inception of Atlan. SocialCops continues as a global data for social good community.
“The IPOs of companies like Slack and Zoom are proof that we live in the era of consumerization of the enterprise. With its sharp focus on data democratization, Atlan is well-positioned to reimagine the future of how data teams work,” said Manish Kheterpal, Managing Partner at WaterBridge Ventures.
Other investors in Atlan include US-based 500 Startups, Singapore-based Hatcher and family offices such as the Bhagchandka family fund.
As data becomes a strategic asset to gain a competitive edge, companies are investing heavily in setting up data teams within their organizations. Gartner estimated that 90 percent of global organizations would have had a chief data officer by 2019.