Jobaaj Stories
Two weeks after PhysicsWallah and Purplle became a part of the Unicorn club, another startup joined the fray. This time it's a SaaS startup called LeadSquared.
The company began as MarketXPander Services in 2011. It was a small team of a handful of individuals that generated tens of thousands of leads for clients around the globe, running several hundred marketing campaigns through inbound and outbound channels at the time. Today, the company provides several products like Sales CRM, Marketing automation, API, etc. It offers CRM services to several industries like Education, Insurance, Healthcare, Banking, etc.
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In 2013, the company launched LeadSquared. The software was aimed at building a powerful tool that assisted businesses to streamline their marketing and sales operations. By 2015, the company launched its mobile app and it was an instant hit with B2C businesses. It has over 2,000 customers globally and serves several large names like Olx, Byju's, Practo, NIIT, and others.
The company did not receive funding via venture capital. The CEO said in an interview that no venture capitalist was willing to give the company funding due to their domestic plans. Since the majority of the company's revenues are from India, venture capitalists felt that the company lacked a global perspective. The company raised funds from Private Equity.
The company announced that it raised $153 million at a valuation of $1 billion (post-money) in Series-C funding which has brought up the company's total funding to $188 million.
With the funding, the company is aiming to expand its international operations to North America, APAC, and EMEA. Moreover, the company is also planning to add more products to its portfolio and fund future acquisitions.
"We are grateful for the support of our investors as we strive to build LeadSquared into a globally significant business. With this financing, we will double down on growth investments in India and North America, start building in APAC and EMEA, add new offerings to our product portfolio, and fund acquisitions. To support our growth, we plan to double our headcount in the next 18 months,” said Nilesh Patel, co-founder, and CEO of the company.
Article by Aman Agarwal.
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