Keychain, a US startup that helps consumer brands find manufacturing partners, has raised $30 million in fresh funding to expand its India-based development team to drive growth in North America.
While headquartered in New York, Keychain operates as a decentralized company with core engineering and product development centered around India. The model doubles the model with new funding, aiming to grow Gurugram’s engineering, product design and analytics team from 35 to 70 in the coming months and about 100 within a year. The India-based team already represents half of the keychain’s 70 global personnel, with around 20 employees in New York and the rest in Austin handling partnerships, to-market and sales.
The strategy is intentional. Despite serving only the Western market, Keychain is building its main development operations in Gurugram, the second largest high-tech hub after Bengaluru, to develop a consumer packaged product (CPG) platform for clients in North America. The software platform has already helped eight of the seven retailers and seven of seven CPG brands, such as General Mills, connect with the potentially appropriate manufacturers, according to the startup. So why India?
“It’s about talent, depth, availability and the speed at which you can access that depth and availability talent. [in India]Oisin Hanrahan, co-founder and CEO of Keychain, said in an interview.
Hanrahan was co-founded with Uman Dua in 2023. This is the co-founder of Jordan Weitz, a home service software startup that Angi later acquired. According to Hanrahan, Dua, who is originally from New Delhi, has been a “natural advantage” in building a keychain core team in Gurugram.
Both Hanrahan and Dua spent time building their Indian and US keychain teams, eventually choosing India as their company’s engineering hub. This decision was shaped by their experiences at Handy and Angi.
“We thought about engineering. How can we build a core, sustainable engineering organization that can be reasonably rapidly scaled, endurance, a deep talent pool, and AI exposure that can take on the real and important challenges?”
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Several US startups, especially those developing SaaS solutions, are the basis for engineering and product teams in cities such as Bengaluru, Gurugram and Noida. Over the past few months, the country has also seen a wave of multinational companies establishing offshore hubs, often referred to as the Global Capacity Centre. But unlike most of these companies, India is targeting Indian consumers, even though it says it’s difficult to sell India, but the keychain is far apart. It is similar to companies like Deliveroo in the UK and Gojek and Grab in Southeast Asia. All of these leverage Indian technological talent for product development and R&D without being present in the market domestically.
“India’s position as a global technology hub has become a compelling destination for product development, even startups that have no direct business in the country,” said Neha Singh, co-founder of Tracxn, a private market intelligence platform based in Bengaluru, in an interview with TechCrunch.
Also, the Indian time zone allows teams to work beyond our time, allowing for near-continuous development cycles, Singh added.
Keychanos as the next big thing coming from Indian talent
Not only will the Keychain be using the Indian team to improve its current platform, but it plans to launch in February 2024 and build software powered by over 20,000 brands and retailers to not only use it to find manufacturing partners, but also to build new AI-powered software that will help manufacturers manage their product cycles more efficiently and with better monitoring.
The software called Keychainos has four modules, the first module is already available. This module helps manufacturers to comply with food safety requirements, use AI to retrieve quantitative data and convert it into qualitative reports that can be shared with auditors. Hanrahan can also use natural language to extract data when auditors request specific insights.
The other three modules of the software focus on purchasing and procurement, inventory and production planning, the executive said.
The OS offering will compete with traditional ERP systems such as Oracle, QAD and Plex, which require add-ons such as TraceGains and Redzone to be available to manufacturers, the startup says.
In addition to keychains for manufacturers, Keychain incorporates AI into the search and discovery layer to help retailers quickly find third-party manufacturers associated with their products.
The keychain is already helping brands and retailers find third-party manufacturers in the food, beverage, supplements, health and beauty categories, and is looking to expand the platform to pets and household items later this year.
The startup currently serves US and Canadian businesses and is aiming to enter Europe later this year.
Startups provide software to brands and retailers for free, but manufacturers pay to access the platform and be discovered. KeyChainos offers another reason to engage with them.
Keychain already has over 30,000 manufacturers on its platform, with “hundreds and hundreds” paying for it. These customers pay locations ranging from $10,000 to $100,000, adding that startups earn an average of around $20,000 per year per year, adding that they earn around $20,000 per manufacturer.
KeyChain’s Series B round was led by Wellington Management and the existing Investor Box Group, along with other existing investors. The funding has raised the startup a total of $68 million. In the meantime, Hanrahan told TechCrunch that the startup still has more than $50 million banks.
The startup won a money valuation of $260 million in the final round of the last $15 million in November 2024. Hanrahan did not disclose his current rating, but said it was a “good step up.”
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