Virginia-based customer feedback analytics platform raised $2.3 million in seed funding from RTP Ventures (leading), Felton Group, the family office of Jaffray Woodriff, and a further injection from existing investor Entrepreneurs Roundtable Accelerator to complete the round.

Yogi’s platform uses natural language processing algorithms to reach a granular level of analyzing unstructured customer feedback, regardless of where it comes from or the volume.  A recent study of this area suggested that unstructured data, including audio, video and email files, accounts for around 80 per cent of the data held by financial services firms. Analyzing it could help firms uncover trends to improve customer experience and better protect against fraud if analyzed in more meaningful ways.

The study, conducted by UK-based Cloud Technology Solutions, found that two-thirds of managers were not using machine learning consistently across their businesses to extract value. More often it is piecemeal, with 57 per cent of respondents saying ML is being used by IT departments and 32 per cent saying it was confined to their risk unit. The survey found that the current top use of ML in the sector is to tackle regulatory compliance (73 per cent).

Yogi believes its solution lies in using “neural network technology" to provide contextual analysis for how humans act when reading and interpreting data, such as where words are placed in a sentence.

The more traditional way of parsing unstructured data relies on frequency counts and statistical analysis to build visual word clouds scrapped from client interactions. Yogi argue that its “neural” approach produces stronger data leading to “more confident decision-making” where teams can “actually understand how customers feel and what they care about.”

Justin Wisz from RTP Ventures, who will join Yogi’s board, said: “Its approach to interpreting volumes of disjointed feedback data and uncovering topical insights represents the next generation of business intelligence, and organizations will build better products and customer experiences” as a result.

The capital injection will allow Yogi to expand the platform and broaden appeal to more industries. Early users of the technology have ranged from consulting firms to mobile app start-ups to luxury retail brands, the firm said; its distilling techniques have helped businesses develop new product lines and hone customers' requirements.

The software “analyzes tens of thousands of data points in moments and isolates the key signals within the noise". It then turns results into visualizations that let teams "dive into the details and manipulate feedback chronologically, categorically, and even emotionally for actionable customer insight.” Traditional analysis tools which trawl everything from ratings and reviews to surveys and support requests are not keeping pace, it said.

In a sector that is as breathless as it is breakneck in turning data into a valuable currency for businesses, venture capital is lining up to take a punt on early stage developers using machine learning and AI.

“Their AI-powered software has more visibility into customer sentiment than is currently available on the market,’ said Jaffray Woodriff, co-founder and CEO of Quantitative Investment Management (QIM), part of the Felton Group.

Both RTP, leading the round, and Woodriff have strong backgrounds in data science and AI. “They truly understand our back-end technology and how it will allow us to stand out,” Yogi co-founder and CEO, Gautam Kanumuru, said. The former Microsoft alumni launched the startup in 2017.

Funding in the short term will be used to boost engineering and sales teams and increase the functionality of the product to attract new customers, he said.