SUMMARY
Unitus Ventures and Michael and Susan Dell Foundation made a partial exit
Salesken.ai will be using the funds to enhance its product and expand geographically
The platform is said to gauge the sentiments of business customers through their conversations
Bengaluru-based conversational intelligence sales tech platform Salesken.ai, on Thursday (March 5), announced that it has raised $8 Mn in Series A funding from Sequoia India. Through this round, Unitus Ventures and Michael and Susan Dell Foundation made a partial exit from the startup. The transaction was facilitated by Masterkey Holdings.
Salesken.ai said it will be using the funds to enhance its platform and expand into other geographies across the Asia Pacific and North America regions.
Salesken.ai was started in 2018 by Surga Thilakan and Sreeraman Vaidyanathan, along with Vaibhav Verma. The company claims to provide sales representatives conversational support based on a behavioural and data-science-driven approach. The product provides insight on various aspects, including sales pitch, lead qualification and navigating pricing discussions among others.
Thilakan claimed that many companies squander a third of their customer acquisition costs on preventable lead losses and face the unpredictability of sales outcomes and an inability to replicate success at scale. “The product helps these teams with real-time intelligence during their sales conversations to help them win more deals,” he added.
Shailesh Lakhani, MD from Sequoia India also said that inside sales have many unique management, training and scaling challenges, but it is often the most productive form of sales that adds value for the business across industries.
Last month, Bengaluru-based enterprise tech startup Whatfix raised $32 Mn in Series C funding round led by Sequoia India, along with existing investors Eight Roads Ventures, F-Prime Capital and Cisco Investments.
In January 2020, Bengaluru and Califonia-based enterprise tech startup focused on field operations — Zinier also raised $90 Mn in Series C funding led by tech-focused investment fund ICONIQ Capital, alongside Tiger Global Management and existing investors such as Accel Partners, Founders Fund, Nokia-backed NGP Capital, France-based Newfund Capital and Qualcomm Ventures.
According to a recent report, the global sales enablement platform market is expected to grow from $1.1 Bn in 2019 to $2.6 Bn by 2024, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 19.8% during the forecast period (2019-2024). The growth of the sector is said to be fuelled by various factors such as reduces the sales cycle, collaboration with other departments within the company, improving the efficiency of sales representatives.
