technology

QR code startup Beaconstac raises $25 million in funding


Beaconstac, a Quick Response (QR) code-based Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) company, has raised $25 million in its first external funding round, dubbed Series A, led by San Francisco-based Telescope Partners.

Accel India also participated in the round, the company said in a statement.

The New York and Bengaluru-headquartered startup creates and tracks QR codes for clients.

Beaconstac’s parent entity, Uniqode Phygital, was incorporated in early 2022 but it has existed as a product since 2019 under an older parent entity, Mobilemotion Technologies, which from 2009 to 2019 ran Mobstac, a technology product that helps publishers build and manage their mobile websites and apps. Mobstac’s investors included Cisco and Accel.

Sharat Potharaju co-founded both Mobstac and Beaconstac with childhood friend and fellow IIT-Madras alumnus Ravi Pratap. The co-founders have now disbanded Mobilemotion Technologies.

Operating with a gross margin of 85%, Beaconstac grew revenue by 300% from 2020 to 2022, and 200% from 2021 to 2022, Potharaju, who is also its CEO, told ET.

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The company has been profitable since inception, he added.Beaconstac has 75 employees across offices in New York and Bengaluru and plans to increase headcount by 200% this year.

Over the past 12 months, Beaconstac has created and tracked 1.8 million QR codes that were scanned over 150 million times by consumers, the company said. Over 93% of its revenues currently is from North America, Potharaju added.

“All of our large enterprise clients are first-time adopters… sitting in India, we are building a unique SaaS platform which is the first of its kind across the world. This category itself has fructified over the last three years, and we are market leaders,” he said.

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Beaconstac’s clientele of 25,000 paying customers includes 1% of enterprise clients such as food and beverages company Nestle, cosmetics company Revlon, shipping giant FedEx and hospitality chain Marriott.

“While Beaconstac’s revenue growth has been impressive, what makes them unique in my mind is how rapidly they’ve been able to scale to the mid-market and enterprise segments with a product-led growth model,” Accel partner Shekhar Kirani said.

The pricing on Beaconstac’s website ranges from $8 to $99 a month under existing plans. Customers are either priced on the number of QR codes being deployed or number of users using it.

Other companies in the space include Germany-based Egoditor, which was acquired in 2021 by hyperlink management company Bitly, and New York-based Flowcode.

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