LeadSquared SaaS startup becomes India's 103rd company, raising $153 million

Sales-as-a-service (SaaS) automation software platform, LeadSquared, operated by MarketXpander Services Pvt. Ltd, India's 103rd unicorn after it raised $153 million (about Rs 1,195 crore) in a Series C funding round from new investor WestBridge Capital and other existing investors. The Unicorn Corporation is a private startup valued at over $1 billion. LeadSquared entered the coveted unicorn club shortly after raising the Purple and Physics Wallah fundraisers this month.

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With this financing, we will double our investments in India and North America, build in the Asia Pacific (Asia Pacific) and EMEA (EMEA) regions, and add new offerings to our product portfolio and financial acquisitions. In addition, to support our growth, we plan to double our headcount in the next 18 months," said Nilesh Patel, Founder and CEO of LeadSquared. For the year ending March 2022, LeadSquared's total revenue has doubled to around Rs 200 crore, up from Rs 100 crore in fiscal year 21.

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Our goal is to achieve profitability in the next three years. We grow money, but we don't burn it. We will focus on growth and keep spending if the opportunity presents itself. Still, we will make sense about it," Patel told VCCircle, adding that LeadSquared wants to solve the problem of scale, speed, and complexity and can support high-growth businesses where automation is an excellent service.

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The decade-old Bangalore-based company helps improve sales efficiency and performance for over 2,000 businesses, helping them improve marketing, call centre, in-house sales, field sales and other teams standing on the street, including verifications, collections, and provider hosting. , etc. "LeadSquared has demonstrated an impressive ability to scale and grow efficiently. Its focus on building a platform that transforms sales operations through automation has significant growth potential in the global marketplace," said Sommer Shada, Co-Founder and CEO of WestBridge Capital.

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Barclays acted as the exclusive underwriting agent for Group C financing. LeadSquared was founded in 2011 by Patel, Prashant Singh, Sudhakar Gurti and Anand Kumar, who left the company within three years.

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The company raised external institutional capital for the first time in May 2019 by injecting $3 million as part of its first series led by Stakeboat Capital. In its previous Series B fundraising round, LeadSquared raised $32 million led by Gaja Capital in December 2020, including a follow-up tranche in October 2021 from the International Finance Corporation, the investment unit of the World Bank.

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It also counts Jyoti Bansal, an Indian-American tech entrepreneur, as one of its early investors. LeadSquared, which competes with the likes of Salesforce, Pipedrive, Zoho, and others, offers organizations in educational technology, higher education, financial services, healthcare, e-commerce marketplaces, and other sectors, with a significant portion of the revenue coming from the education space.

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Its clients include Byju's, Amity University, OLX, Dunzo, Practo, Poonawala Fincorp, Godrej Housing Finance and Angel One. In addition to its presence in India, LeadSquared has operations in the United States, the Philippines, South Africa, Australia and Indonesia.

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Its latest products include the launch of sales performance analytics and a suite of tools for digitizing order processing (an essential process for finance and education), its development platform and a codeless workflow builder. During the current funding crisis and deteriorating valuations, Patel says, "From a directional standpoint, SaaS is a good story, and while valuations may change, startup funding is disrupting the area in which it must continue."

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"LeadSquared is rapidly emerging as a leader in the high-speed sales execution software. Nilesh and his team have built a solid platform with a strong economic unit. In this round, the company has a strong balance sheet to continue investing in India's growth," said Gopal Jain, Managing Partner at Gaja Capital. As well as international markets, especially the United States."