Mindtickle Enters Unicorn Club With SoftBank-Led $100 Mn Series E

Sales enablement platform Mindtickle has become the latest unicorn startup in India, after raising $100 Mn in its Series E round of funding led by Japanese investment giant SoftBank, at a valuation of $1.2 Bn.

The round saw participation from existing investors Norwest Venture Partners, Canaan, NewView Capital, and Qualcomm Ventures. This takes the company’s tidal funding to $281 Mn. This is Softbank’s second investment in Mindtickle. In November 2020, the SaaS startup raised $100 Mn in a mix of equity and debt funding led by SoftBank at a valuation of $500 Mn. 

Founded in 2011 by Krishna Depura, Nishant Mungali, Mohit Garg and Deepak Diwakar, Mindtickle is a SaaS platform that focuses on improving the sales function in businesses by understanding ideal sales behaviors, increasing seller knowledge and skill sets, and incorporating real-world feedback from their meetings with customers. 

“Revenue leaders understand that sales readiness is a mission-critical component of their strategy to consistently meet or exceed their goals,” said Krishna Depura, CEO and cofounder, Mindtickle. “They are taking more square ownership of these programs, and partnering with their sales enablement, revenue operations, and training teams to create a continuous state of excellence across their organizations.”

The Pune and San Francisco-based company claims to cut training time for salespeople who need to be kept up-to-date on new product lines. It also offers solutions for onboarding, micro-learning, skills development and coaching to companies that have been using legacy learning management systems (LMS).

“We continue to be impressed by Mindtickle’s performance in creating and becoming a category leader in the sales readiness space,” said Munish Varma, managing partner, SoftBank Investment Advisers “The product has become an essential part of any sales organization and we are excited to support the company in its growth.”

Sumer Juneja, Partner, SoftBank Investment Advisers, added “Since our last round, Mindtickle has consistently delivered ahead of plan across all metrics. We are encouraged by their increasing customer additions, contract expansions and new product launches and acceptance. We are delighted to be increasing our exposure to Mindtickle as they enter their next phase of growth.”

Following the Mindtickle funding, India now has a list of 19 companies that have earned a valuation of over $1 Bn in the current calendar year. Besides Mindtickle, enterprise tech startups OfBusiness, Chargebee, Gupshup and BrowserStack have turned unicorns this year. 

This is the second unicorn in August 2021. Earlier this week, Delhi NCR-based merchant payments and financial services provider BharatPe entered the unicorn club after it bagged $370 Mn in Series E equity round led by Tiger Global at valuation of $2.85 Bn.

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