Captricity Raises $10M in Series B to Transform How Businesses Handle Legacy Paper Processes

BERKELEY, Calif., July 15, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- Captricity Inc., the Berkeley-based SaaS firm that gives enterprise customers fast and easy access to high quality data, today announced a $10 million Series B round of financing led by Atlas Venture, with Social+Capital also participating. Chris Lynch, partner at Atlas, will join Captricity's board.

The Series B round brings Captricity's total funds raised to $14 million, including original investments from Social+Capital, Atlas Venture, The Knight Foundation and angel investors including Dave Goldberg, Reid Hoffmann and Mitch Kapor.

"One of the challenges with big data is that it's often restricted to new data or data that is already digital. Captricity enables businesses to bring their legacy documents and workflows into the world of big data analytics without having to make wholesale changes to their business processes," said Chris Lynch. "Captricity provides a solution to a very large problem. They are ready to scale, and this is the year they will really take off."

Captricity also announced today a partnership with New York Life Direct, a division of New York Life, to help the Fortune 100 life insurance company respond to customers by digitizing on-demand more than 500,000 of the paper-based business leads that they receive each year. Captricity's technology – which combines machine learning and human intelligence to convert handwritten forms into actionable data – enables New York Life Direct to smoothly integrate paper documents into their digital workflow.

Josephine Saletto, Corporate Vice President of Accounting at New York Life Direct, added, "Captricity's unique business model enabled us to quickly pilot the technology, which we are now rolling out across the organization."

Captricity was founded by Kuang Chen, whose PhD research in Tanzania and Uganda revealed the need to transform paper-based documents into digital data to improve organizations' efficiency and service. Since commercializing its proprietary solution in 2011, Captricity has processed data for clients across sectors such as health, government and enterprise, including the FDA, Symantec, Humana, Georgia's Department of Ethics and Broward Community College.

"As we've seen over and over again, the best way for an organization that uses paper workflows to go digital is to embrace what works – paper – and focus on data. Captricity enables organizations to focus on putting their data to work," said Chen. "We're excited to announce our new funding and to partner with New York Life as we continue to expand the work we do in heavily regulated markets with serious enterprise demands, especially government, healthcare and insurance, which are paper-intensive and have strict security and compliance requirements."

Today's news comes on the heels of Captricity's partnership with the Federal Drug Administration (FDA) to digitize the backlog of paper reports submitted to MedWatch, the FDA Safety Information and Adverse Event Reporting Program. The data contributed to the FDA's open government initiative, openFDA, which recently launched in public beta.

About Captricity
Captricity is the only Software as a Service, multi-channel data capture platform that converts information from static documents into 99% accurate, machine readable data – and the first service of its kind to handle handwriting. It pulls data from forms – in the form of faxes, email attachments, scans or mobile phone photos – with same-day turnaround time for any volume of documents. Captricity is part of a new wave of cloud-based solutions focused on simple business processes that large organizations are using to replace their on-premises solutions. Based in Berkeley, Captricity was founded in 2011 by Kuang Chen. For more information, please visit www.captricity.com.

About Atlas
Atlas Venture is a leading early-stage international venture capital firm that invests in technology and life sciences businesses. Since inception in 1980, its partners have helped build over 350 companies in more than 16 different countries. For more information, visit Atlas' website at www.atlasventure.com.

About New York Life
New York Life Insurance Company, a Fortune 100 company founded in 1845, is the largest mutual life insurance company in the United States** and one of the largest life insurers in the world. New York Life has the highest possible financial strength ratings currently awarded to any life insurer from all four of the major credit rating agencies: A.M. Best (A++), Fitch (AAA), Moody's Investors Service (Aaa), Standard & Poor's (AA+).*** Headquartered in New York City, New York Life's family of companies offers life insurance, retirement income, investments and long-term care insurance. New York Life Investments**** provides institutional asset management and retirement plan services. Other New York Life affiliates provide an array of securities products and services, as well as retail mutual funds. Please visit New York Life's website at www.newyorklife.com for more information.

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SOURCE Captricity Inc.