LeadSquared, a SaaS startup that’s serving to gross sales groups grow to be extra environment friendly with its CRM platform, is the most recent Indian startup to grow to be a unicorn.
LeadSquared mentioned on Tuesday it has raised $153 million in a Sequence C funding spherical that valued it at $1 billion (post-money). The spherical was led by WestBridge Capital, the 11-year-old startup mentioned. Current backers together with Gaja Capital additionally participated within the new funding, which takes the startup’s all-time elevate to $188 million.
The startup helps corporations automate gross sales, bringing effectivity to all of the contact factors the place gross sales executives are concerned together with name facilities, feet-on-street power and different areas together with digital the place shopper purchases happen. The startup gives the corporations with instruments to simply on-board distributors, do verifications and collections.
LeadSquared says its CRM platform “takes away the guesswork” from gross sales execution — “regardless of how advanced the client journey.”
The startup, which employs about 1,200 individuals, presently generates 90% of its income within the house market of India, mentioned Nilesh Patel, co-founder and chief government of LeadSquared, in an interview with TechCrunch. Within the monetary 12 months ending March this 12 months, the startup doubled its income to about $25.6 million, he mentioned.
Patel co-founded LeadSquared with Prashant Singh and Sudhakar Gorti in 2011, a time when there weren’t many startups within the nation. The founders beforehand labored as consultants and constructed a software program companies enterprise. “That was a enterprise round product engineering companies, promoting to U.S. and European markets. We acquired loads of learnings from that,” he mentioned.
The startup recognized that business-to-consumer companies have been lastly starting to emerge and thrive within the South Asian market, which is now house to over 100 unicorns. “They have been early adopters of what we constructed. And people companies grew, we discovered ourselves to be fortunate to be there.”
“LeadSquared has proven a outstanding potential to scale and develop effectively. Its core SaaS metrics are distinctive and best-in-class within the trade,” mentioned Sumir Chadha, co-founder and managing director of WestBridge Capital, in a press release.
“Its deal with constructing an easy-to-use platform that transforms gross sales processes by means of automation delivering unparalleled effectivity, has important potential for development within the international market. Way forward for LeadSquared could be very thrilling to us and we look ahead to an extended partnership with the corporate.”
LeadSquared has amassed over 2,000 prospects together with Pearson, Byju’s, Dunzo, Kotak Securities, Amazon Pay, Olx and Uni. As you’ll be able to inform, its prospects span throughout a number of sectors together with healthcare, edtech, lending, banking and marketplaces. The startup plans to deploy the recent funds to broaden its worldwide operations in North America, the APAC area and EMEA.
The startup is now trying to broaden its product with new options together with gross sales efficiency analytics and a collection of instruments to digitize software processing. “Our story is vertical purposes. Our product shouldn’t be CRM-to-CRM comparability. So after we go to a brand new vertical, there are specific adjacencies which are related however might not essentially fall within the basic lens of gross sales advertising and marketing, so these are alternative areas for us,” mentioned Patel.
“We’re grateful for the assist of our buyers as we attempt to construct LeadSquared right into a globally important enterprise. With this financing, we are going to double down on development investments in India and North America, begin constructing in APAC and EMEA, add new choices to our product portfolio and fund acquisitions. To assist our development, we plan to double our headcount within the subsequent 18 months,” mentioned Patel.
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