Keychain Secures $30 Million Funding: Fostering Innovation from India

New Funding and Expansion in India

Keychain, an American startup specializing in connecting consumer brands with manufacturing partners, announced that it has secured new funding of $30 million. This investment aims to expand its engineering team in India to support continuous growth in the North American market. Although Keychain’s headquarters are in New York, it adopts a distributed operating model, with most of its engineering and product development operations concentrated in India. The startup intends to double its investment in this operational model thanks to the latest funding, with the goal of increasing the number of employees in its engineering, product design, and analytics teams in Gurugram from 35 to 70 in the coming months, and plans to reach approximately 100 employees within one year. This India-based team already represents half of Keychain’s global workforce of 70 individuals, while approximately 20 employees work in New York, and the rest in Austin, responsible for partnerships, market expansion, and sales.

Growth Strategy and Focus on Gurugram

Keychain adopts a robust growth strategy. Despite its focus on serving only Western markets, Keychain has chosen to establish its main development operations in Gurugram, which is considered India's second-largest technology hub after Bangalore. This centralization aims to develop an advanced platform for packaged consumer goods (CPG) specifically designed for its North American clients. This software platform currently connects eight of the ten largest retailers, including 7-Eleven and Whole Foods, as well as seven prominent CPG brands such as General Mills, with suitable potential manufacturers, according to the startup's affirmations.

Why India? Abundance of Talent and Expertise

Oisin Hanrahan, co-founder and CEO of Keychain, stated during an interview that the fundamental reason for choosing India lies in "the abundance of talent, depth of expertise, ease of access, and the speed with which these highly competent individuals can be hired." Keychain was founded in 2023 by Hanrahan, Umang Dua (who was his co-founder at Handy, a home services software company later acquired by Angi), and Jordan Weitz. Hanrahan noted that Dua, who hails from New Delhi, played a "natural and crucial role" in building Keychain's core teams in Gurugram.

After spending time structuring Keychain's teams in both India and the United States, Hanrahan and Dua decided to make India the company's primary engineering hub. This decision was influenced by their previous experiences at Handy and Angi, where they faced difficulty in building a "sustainable and permanent" engineering team within the United States. Hanrahan told TechCrunch: "We thought about engineering development as follows: how can we create a core, sustainable engineering organization capable of scaling at a reasonable pace, highly flexible, with deep talent pools, and expertise in artificial intelligence that can address real and important challenges, and be geared towards achieving business objectives? And looking at the places where we had such teams before, during our work at Handy and Angi, it became clear that India is an ideal location that meets many of these fundamental requirements."

Keychain's Unique Position in the Indian Development Market

Many American startups, especially those focused on developing Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions, tend to establish their engineering and product development teams in prominent Indian cities like Bangalore, Gurugram, and Noida. Recently, India has also witnessed an increase in the number of multinational companies establishing offshore development centers, often known as Global Capability Centers. However, Keychain distinguishes itself from most of these companies; while many of them target Indian consumers (despite the challenges of selling products in the Indian market), Keychain stands out with its different focus. It is similar to global companies like the British Deliveroo, Gojek, and Grab in Southeast Asia, all of which leverage India's excellent technical talent for product development and research and development, without having a direct market within the country.

Future Expansion Plans and the Innovative KeychainOS System

Neha Singh, co-founder of the Bangalore-based market intelligence platform Tracxn, stated in an interview with TechCrunch: "India's position as a global technology hub has made it a highly attractive destination for product development, even for startups that do not have direct commercial operations within the country." Singh added that favorable time differences in India enable teams to work effectively outside traditional U.S. working hours, facilitating continuous development cycles and increasing efficiency.

Keychain intends to invest its team in India not only to enhance its current platform, launched in February 2024 and serving over 20,000 brands and retailers in their search for manufacturing partners, but also to develop innovative software based on artificial intelligence. This software will help manufacturers manage their product cycles with enhanced efficiency and better control.

The KeychainOS program will include four main modules, with the first module already available. This module supports manufacturers in achieving compliance with food safety requirements by using artificial intelligence to convert quantitative data into qualitative reports shareable with auditors. The program also features the ability to extract data using natural language processing when auditors request specific information, according to Hanrahan's statements to TechCrunch. The CEO explained that the remaining three modules of the program will focus on improving purchasing operations, supply management, inventory tracking, and production planning.

The startup stated that the KeychainOS operating system will strongly compete with traditional Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems such as Oracle, QAD, and Plex, which often require specialized add-ons like TraceGains and Redzone to be practical for manufacturers. In addition to KeychainOS dedicated to manufacturers, Keychain has integrated artificial intelligence technologies within its search and discovery layer, aiming to help retailers quickly and effectively identify the most suitable external manufacturers for their products.

Business Model and Geographical Expansion

Keychain currently assists brands and retailers in finding external manufacturers across various categories, including food, beverages, dietary supplements, and health and beauty products. The company looks forward to expanding its platform to include pet products and household products later this year. Currently, the startup serves companies in both the United States and Canada, and plans to enter the European market later the same year.

While the startup offers its software for free to brands and retailers, manufacturers pay for access to the platform and the ability to be discovered. The KeychainOS program provides them with an additional incentive to join. Keychain's platform currently includes over 30,000 manufacturers, of which "hundreds and hundreds" pay fees to use the service. Hanrahan stated that these clients pay amounts ranging from $10,000 to over $100,000, noting that the startup generates average revenues of approximately $20,000 annually per manufacturer.

Details of the Latest Funding Round

Wellington Management and BoxGroup, an existing investor, led Keychain's Series B funding round, with participation from other existing investors. Thanks to this latest funding, the total raised by the startup reached $68 million. Hanrahan told TechCrunch that Keychain still has over $50 million in cash in the bank from this amount. After a previous funding round of $15 million in November 2024, the startup was then valued at $260 million. Hanrahan did not disclose the current valuation of the company, but confirmed that it represents a "positive and advanced step."