Intelliseek

Digital listening and sentiment analytics—before social media even had a name.

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Intelliseek, co-founded by Mahendra Vora and Sundar Kadayam in Cincinnati, was a pioneering technology company that anticipated the rise of digital consumer intelligence long before social media went mainstream. Founded in the late 1990s, it developed Bullseye, a powerful deep web search that mined unstructured data from message boards, forums, early blogs, and news sites. Leveraging early NLP and machine learning, Bullseye gave Fortune 500 companies real-time visibility into consumer sentiment, brand perception, and market dynamics—well before such capabilities were common.

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Recognizing the growing power of online word-of-mouth, Intelliseek evolved into one of the first companies to track and analyze consumer-generated media at scale and delivered BrandPulse, a technology laid the groundwork for what later became social listening, influencer marketing, and earned media analytics. In 2006, Intelliseek merged with BuzzMetrics and was acquired by Nielsen, forming Nielsen BuzzMetrics. The successful exit delivered strong investor returns and helped shape an entire industry around real-time digital listening.