Case Study
How Scend Built Agentic Search for Finance Using Crustdata's Live Data
Company
Scend AI
use case
Investment
company overview
Scend is building agentic search for financial companies. They are specifically serving investment banks, private equity firms and growth equity teams. Their platform requires comprehensive, fresh company and people data at scale to power AI-driven search workflows.
Before selecting Crustdata, Scend's co-founder Anirudh Sathya led a comprehensive evaluation of the data vendor landscape, assessing providers including Spectre, People Data Labs, Mixed Rank, Bright Data, Phantom Buster, and building data infrastructure internally. Several core limitations emerged across the ecosystem:
Out-of-date Data Across Existing Platforms
Finance-focused databases like Crunchbase and PitchBook had an inherent "stillness" to them
People change jobs, companies raise rounds, employee counts shift but traditional databases did not reflect these changes until a scheduled database refresh
For an agentic platform that needed to return live information on demand, powering their platform with “still” data was out of the equation
Fragmented Data Requiring Multiple Vendors
Most providers offered narrow slices of company or people data
Getting a full picture of a single company such as description, employee count, similar companies, fundraising history meant hitting several different APIs
Engineering time was spent reconciling results across sources rather than building their product
Complex, Multi-Step API Workflows
Several vendors required multi-step API interactions: submit a request, receive a ticket, then make a second call to retrieve data
For a team building agentic workflows that needed to move fast, these extra steps added unnecessary complexity and latency
Limited Customer Support and Responsiveness
With most data vendors, when something broke or a question arose, Scend was on their own as they had no direct line to engineering or product teams
A lot of their issues either went unresolved or required migrating to a different provider entirely
Crustdata provided the data infrastructure Scend needed to power their agentic search platform - live, comprehensive, and simple to integrate.
Live, On-Demand Data Freshness
Unlike providers that serve static databases as an API, Crustdata's API delivers live search for people and company data
When Scend's platform looks up a company, the data reflects current reality instead of a cached record from months ago
This was a key differentiator that most competitors in their evaluation couldn't match
Comprehensive Data Breadth Per Entity
Crustdata bundles deep company intelligence into single API responses such as company descriptions, employee counts, similar companies, fundraising information, and more
This reduced the number of sources Scend needed to query and simplified their data pipeline, reducing engineering overhead
Simple, Direct API Design
Crustdata's API follows a straightforward request-response model - ask for data, get data. There are no ticket systems or multi-step retrieval workflows
Integration was significantly faster for a team building agentic systems where speed and simplicity matter
Dedicated Slack-Based Customer Support
Scend has a direct Slack channel with the Crustdata team - something no other provider in their evaluation offered
Created a partnership dynamic where issues could be raised and resolved quickly and product feedback flows both ways
Agentic Search Powered by Live Data
Scend's platform can now refresh company and people data on demand, delivering real-time results to investment banks, PE firms, and BD teams
Financial professionals get current information when researching companies and contacts making the platform more trustworthy in the eyes of their users because the results actually match reality when they verify
Engineering Time Redirected to Product
By consolidating multiple data vendors into Crustdata, Scend eliminated the overhead of maintaining parallel integrations and reconciling data across sources
Engineering effort shifted from data plumbing to building core agentic search capabilities
Faster, Simpler Data Integration Cycles
Crustdata's direct request-response API allowed Scend to integrate and ship faster compared to vendors with multi-step retrieval workflows
This meant the team spent less time on workarounds and infrastructure and more time building features for clients
A Partnership That Scales With the Product
Over a year into the relationship, Scend treats Crustdata as a building partner rather than a vendor
Direct Slack access means issues get resolved fast and product feedback shapes Crustdata's roadmap alongside Scend's evolving needs