Business-to-business (B2B) software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform Venwiz has raised $8.3 million (Rs 68.8 crore) in a Series A funding round, led by Sanjay Nayar's early-stage tech-focused venture capital company, Sorin Investments.
The round also saw participation from existing investors Accel and Nexus Venture Partners along with new investors Jafco Asia, Riverwalk Holdings, Force Ventures and angel investors like Sanjeev Rangrass (ITC agri business), Anshuman Sinha (AT Kearney), Prabhav Kashyap (Bain), amongst others.
The company, operated by Venwiz Technologies Pvt. Ltd, plans on utilising the funding received towards hiring along with product development and expansion of its client base.
“With this round of funding, we aim to onboard more talent, mostly in tech and business operation roles. We are also working towards broadening our client base, and are in advanced talks with several enterprise companies,” said Sandesh Paturi, co-founder and chief business officer, Venwiz.
Founded in 2020 by Paturi and Rajesh Reddy, Venwiz is a SaaS-enabled B2B industrial services marketplace, digitising capex and industrial services procurement, aligned towards the manufacturing industry.
The Bengaluru-based company claims to have onboarded 10,000 vendors on its platform across 40 service categories. It counts companies like Nestle, TVS, ITC, Tata Coffee and Kohler Power as part of its client portfolio.
In 2021, the company raised $3 million in a seed funding round led by led by Accel India and Nexus Venture Partners and has cumulatively raised $11.3 million so far.
“Venwiz is addressing a white space in the manufacturing segment of different industries - procurement of industrial services for capex and maintenance, repair and operations (MRO) needs. The adoption of the Venwiz platform from enterprise clients and vendors demonstrates the need for such a solution,” added Mandar Dandekar, partner, Sorin Investments.
The investment also marks Sorins’ first investment this year. In December 2022, the tech fund co-founded by Sanjay Nayar, a former chairman of KKR India, and Angad Banga of Hong Kong-based Caravel group participated in the $12.5 million Series A funding round of Uniqus Consultech Inc. In July, VCCircle had reported that Sorin raised $100 million in the first close of its maiden fund from a clutch of family offices.
As for the SaaS space, according to data from startup intelligence platform Tracxn, it emerged as one of the top-funded sectors in 2022. Additionally, homegrown SaaS firms are poised to touch an annual revenue run rate (ARR) of $35 billion by 2027,private equity giant Bain said in a report last month.
There has been an uptick in the number of early-stage deals in the sector. Last week, Bengaluru-based SaaS startup Inkle raised $1.5 million as a part of its pre-seed funding round from Picus Capital, Saison Capital and Force Ventures. During the same period, Sequoia’s accelerator program Surge led a $3.7 million seed funding round of SaaS startup Hatica.
In January 2023, artificial intelligence-powered SaaS platform Actyv.ai marked the final close of its pre-Series A funding round at $12 million and Sequoia-backed SirionLabs raised $25 million as part of its extended Series D funding round from PE firm Brookfield Growth.
