UPDATED 12:02 EST / DECEMBER 29 2011

Mu Sigma Gets $108M for Big Data Smarts, Buys Back Shares

Mu Sigma, a leading provider of decision sciences and analytics services, has raised an additional $108 million in a series C round of funding. The fresh funds have brought Mu Sigma’s total investment to $150 million. The company will apply the capital towards helping its dozens of Fortune 500 clients make sense of the vast amounts of data being produced online.  They will also use the money to buy back shares from existing shareholders. This funding session was led by General Atlantic, with Sequoia Capital, a current investor, and has also invested $25 Million itself.

As reported by Founder and Chief Executive Dhiraj Rajaram, Mu Sigma’s revenues between 2008 and 2010 grew by 886%. He also said that it will use the new money for more growth, both by acquiring new customers and by developing more services for its current customers.

“We believe we are painting on a very large canvas. There cannot be any business that will not be impacted by analytics and decision science, and there’s a lot more to be done”, said Rajaram.

Mu Sigma employs around 1500 people in its Bangalore delivery center, and puts its best talent through a three-month training program at Mu Sigma University that teaches the basics of consulting, applied math, data modeling, statistics, economics and so on. Mu Sigma is perceived as a house of innovation, especially due to its talented and enriched young workforce. The combination of skills its workforce possesses enables the firm to tackle the incredibly complex work they do.

“I think the fact that big data exists and that companies like Mu Sigma have appeared is an indicator of larger changes on the horizon for companies in spaces that have to compete based on that data,” said Jason Hoffman, Microsoft’s senior director of monetization for paid search, adding that Mu Sigma’s training course is providing a level of expertise not generally available, even in most universities. “We’re not graduating a lot of these folks, and it concerns me deeply,” he said.


Since you’re here …

… We’d like to tell you about our mission and how you can help us fulfill it. SiliconANGLE Media Inc.’s business model is based on the intrinsic value of the content, not advertising. Unlike many online publications, we don’t have a paywall or run banner advertising, because we want to keep our journalism open, without influence or the need to chase traffic.The journalism, reporting and commentary on SiliconANGLE — along with live, unscripted video from our Silicon Valley studio and globe-trotting video teams at theCUBE — take a lot of hard work, time and money. Keeping the quality high requires the support of sponsors who are aligned with our vision of ad-free journalism content.

If you like the reporting, video interviews and other ad-free content here, please take a moment to check out a sample of the video content supported by our sponsors, tweet your support, and keep coming back to SiliconANGLE.