SaaS Startup Rocketlane Raises Funding From Matrix Partners, Nexus Ventures

Software as a Service (SaaS) startup Rocketlane has raised $3 Mn in seed round funding from Matrix Partners India and Nexus Ventures Partners.

The funding also saw participation from angel investors such as Shreesha Ramdas (CEO, Strikedeck), Jonathan Swanson (Cofounder, Thumbtack), Krish Subramanian and Rajaraman Santhanam (Cofounders, Chargebee), Yamini Bhat (CEO, Vymo), Pradeep Rathinam (CCO, Freshworks), and other leading founders and executives.

The company will deploy the funds to hire additional talent and continue establishing its leadership in product and mindshare in a new and emerging category. It will also be used for further enhancing its product.

Founded in 2020 by the entrepreneur trio of Srikrishnan Ganesan, Vignesh Girishankar and Deepak Bala, the company offers a purpose-built unified workspace for collaborating with customers on onboarding projects.The platform helps businesses shorten their time-to-value, streamline their software implementation journeys, and provide real-time visibility, while elevating the customer experience.

Prior to beginning their journey with Rocketlane, the three founders managed Freshchat at Freshworks, after the latter acquired their chat business Konotor (that powered chat in apps like Zomato, Swiggy, and Bigbasket) in 2015. This stint with Freshchat, which included growing the company globally and working with larger enterprise customers helped them gain first hand experience of the difficulties,  and they understood the importance of customer onboarding.

Commenting on other experiences that helped the trio build Rocketlane, Srikrishnan Ganesan, CEO, Rocketlane said “Conversations with 100+ customer onboarding and implementation leaders highlighted challenges arising from generic project management and collaboration tools. The feedback has helped us shape Rocketlane, set the course for the future, and even start Preflight – a Slack-based community for CS and onboarding professionals. We are now a team of 25 working remotely with a vision to create the gold standard for customer onboarding.”

The launch comes after a successful early access program with Aryaka Networks, Joveo, and Netcore among other businesses who switched to Rocketlane for their implementation and onboarding projects.

“Onboarding is becoming the new bottleneck for fast-growing enterprise SaaS ventures, and top VCs are watching the gap between the Live ARR and Contracted ARR among their portfolio companies,” added CEO Srikrishnan Ganesan.

When talking about funding, Vikram Vaidyanathan, managing director, Matrix India, commented, “Sri, Vignesh, and Deepak are serial SaaS entrepreneurs who’ve worked together for almost a decade, have deep SaaS expertise, and a rich shared history. With Rocketlane, they’re creating the benchmark experience for client on-boarding and building a global brand. We’re excited to back their vision and privileged to partner with them.”

The Indian SaaS ecosystem has lately begun to attract venture capital investors and is in the process of rapid growth. As per the Nasscom report, SaaS funding in India has grown by 15 percent CAGR over the last three years.

Just as Ganesan mentioned above, there is a software platform for almost every stage of the customer’s journey today. In the last five years, the number of Indian-funded SaaS firms doubled and the number of firms drawing series C or later stage funding has quadrupled. The industry has the potential to grow 6X to $13-15 Bn by 2025 buoyed by a strong push from the government and other stakeholders.