Google chief scientist backs research search platform’s $750,000 pre-Seed raise

An AI-powered research and insights discovery platform for  research papers has raised $750,000 in a pre-Seed round.

The raise for Outread was backed by the Techstars Accelerator and Google chief scientist Jeff Dean, as well as Google VP of finance Fiona Bones.

The research and insights platform was founded in 2023 by siblings Janhvi and Dhruv Sirohi and Anshika Singh.

Janhvi, the CEO said they were seeking $500,000, but investor demand saw them take on an additional $250,000.

Outread uses machine learning to separate credible, actionable information from the ‘noise’ when researching research. It’s looking to streamline the research process by finding relevant papers, extracting key information, and organising it into concepts for the corporate research market.

Janhvi Sirohi said amid information overload they set out to triage the information available.

“The concept for Outread was further shaped by my own academic journey, which included a rigorous phase pursuing honours at Adelaide, earning a scholarship, and the bold decision to leave the honours program to gain real-world experience at PwC,” she said.

“At Outread our mission is to leverage AI to enhance productivity and ensure users remain on the cutting edge of developments, illustrating the transformative potential of technology in making complex information readily available.”

The cofounders moved to Sydney for three months last year to be part of the inaugural Techstars Sydney accelerator.

Singh, the COO, said the funding will be used to add team members and platform development for B2B product-market fit for the subscription platform. The company is currently conducting pilots with consulting firms. 

“Companies can integrate the Outread dashboard into their workflow which aids them by acting as a feeder into specific advisory, research, or thought leadership outputs,” she said.

“Leveraging third-party research can bolster findings and recommendations, support proposal generation, augment case studies and credentials with formal research as well as foster a baseline of understanding across teams based on the latest research and thinking.” 

Google’s  Jeff Dean said: “I believe the area of tools for understanding large collections of documents, and being able to summarise, contrast and answer questions about these corpora, is an important and valuable one, and the founding team at Outread seems strong and passionate about this area. That is why I invested.”