22/06/2022
STARTUP TAKIES
LeadSquared said on Tuesday it has raised $153 million in a Series C funding round that valued it at $1 billion (post-money). The round was led by WestBridge Capital, the 11-year-old startup said. Existing backers including Gaja Capital also participated in the new funding, which takes the startup’s all-time raise to $188 million.
The startup helps firms automate sales, bringing efficiency to all the touch points where sales executives are involved including call centers, feet-on-street force and other areas including digital where consumer purchases take place. The startup provides the firms with tools to easily on-board vendors, do verifications and collections.
LeadSquared says its CRM platform “takes away the guesswork” from sales ex*****on — “no matter how complex the customer journey.”
The startup, which employs about 1,200 people, currently generates 90% of its revenue in the home market of India, said Nilesh Patel, co-founder and chief executive of LeadSquared, in an interview with TechCrunch. In the financial year ending March this year, the startup doubled its revenue to about $25.6 million, he said.
Patel co-founded LeadSquared with Prashant Singh and Sudhakar Gorti in 2011, a time when there weren’t many startups in the country. The founders previously worked as consultants and built a software services business. “That was a business around product engineering services, selling to U.S. and European markets. We got a lot of learnings from that,” he said.
