SaaS Startup CloudCherry Raises $9 Mn In Extended Series A Funding Round

India and US based customer experience management software provider Cloudcherry has raised $9 Mn in an extended Series A funding round led by the US-based Pelion Venture Partners, an early stage venture capital firm.

Existing investors including, the US-based Cisco Investments, Vertex Ventures and Bengaluru-based IDG Ventures India also participated in the latest funding round of CloudCherry.

CloudCherry co-founder and CEO Vinod Muthukrishnan confirmed the development to Inc42.

Founded in 2013, CloudCherry is a SaaS based platform that collaborates with brands to help them track, measure, and improve customer satisfaction, and at the same time also provide real-time analytics for different departments of the company through its products.

The company plans to utilise these funds to grow its North American Sales and Marketing teams, build out its go-to-market capabilities, and also expand its technological lead through a laser focus on Data Sciences for CX. Other than this, the startup is currently targeting Southeast Asian markets such as Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, and Thailand among others.

As a part of this deal, Head of Collaboration Corporate Development and Venture Investments at Cisco, Donald Tucker, and Senior Vice President, CX Platforms at Cisco Brett Wingo, are to join the board of directors as observers.

Prior to this funding round, CloudCherry raised $7 Mn in two rounds: $6 Mn (INR 40 Cr) from Vertex Ventures, IDG ventures and Cisco Investments in September 2016; and  $1 Mn (INR 6 Cr) from The Chennai Angels (TCA) and IDG Ventures India in July 2015.

“In less than two years, we’ve taken market share from older, established players; drawn attention and coverage from the leading analyst firms; and have established partnerships with industry behemoths including Microsoft and Nielsen,” said Vinod.

CloudCherry helps organizations exceed customer expectations and deliver business outcomes through its three pillars of customer experience:

• Measuring the Customer Journey: Understanding the customer experience through a continuous collection of moments across their journey.
• Gaining a 360^o of the Customer: Bringing disparate data together to enable actionable insights, proactive support and advanced marketing automation.
• Becoming Predictive: Understanding predictively how changes to the customer experience will affect outcomes and impact financial metrics.

The company also claimed that their revenue has more than tripled over the past twelve months. The startup has added global iconic brands such as Puma, Cisco, DBS Bank and Petronas among its enterprise clientele and has gained deep mid-market traction in the credit union segment with customer wins such as Clearview and Solarity.

The startup competes majorly with global players such as US-based inmoment, MatrixCX, CustomerGauge, SurveyMonkey and many others.

Growth of SaaS Industry In India

According to a March 2016 report by Google and Accel Partners, the Indian SaaS market is predicted to become a $10 Bn revenue industry by the year of 2025.

The report also added that global SaaS industry can be predicted to become  $132 Bn revenue industry by the year of 2020, in which India is likely to contribute nearly 8% of the global SaaS revenue by 2025.

This has inclined both the global as well as local investors towards the Indian Saas players. Most recently, in May 2018, Chennai-based SaaS startup Disprz that provides B2B education and skill training, raised an amount of $2.5 Mn in a Series-A funding round which was led by IL&FS Private Equity and Mumbai-based Kae Capital.

Also, Bengaluru-based Mobisy which provides SaaS-based distribution technology solutions for consumer companies, had raised $3.5 Mn (INR 24 Cr) from its second round of venture capital funding which was led by SIDBI Venture Capital Limited (SVCL).

The SaaS industry also got another unicorn, Freshworks, this year. Other notable players in this space are Zoho, Wingify, Zarget, among others.

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