SquadRun Inc., which operates software-as-a-service (SaaS) sales acceleration platform SquadStack, has raised $5 million (about Rs 37 crore) in a Series A funding round.
The round in the San Francisco- and New Delhi-based startup has been led by Chiratae Ventures, with participation from Blume Ventures, an existing investor in the company.
Set up in 2014 by Apurv Agrawal, Vikas Gulati and Kanika Jain, SquadStack says its platform helps consumer businesses selling high-ticket products and services to improve their sales conversions and efficiency.
Sectors it says its platform – SquadIQ – has been applied to include real estate, financial services, education, healthcare, and retail. It will use the funds raised in this Series A round to accelerate its product growth and hire talent for teams including product, engineering, and data science.
“SquadStack is helping consumer companies across industries solve the principal challenge to turn prospects into customers faster and more profitably,” Chiratae Ventures executive director Venkatesh Peddi said.
SquadStack says SquadIQ has worked with companies including Zomato, the Walmart Group, the Times Group, Delhivery, Nestaway, the Tata Group, and ZestMoney. It claims the use of its platform has resulted in a 5-10x improvement in clients’ funnel efficiency metrics.
Apart from SquadIQ, other products SquadStack offers include real estate-focussed business management platform Auctm, and e-commerce and marketplace-targeting data moderation and tagging-based ClassifyIt.
In April 2017, the SaaS firm raised $2.1 million in a funding round led by Blume Ventures. Other participants included Contrarian Capital, 91springboard, Emergent Ventures, Abstract Ventures, Anthill Ventures, Axilor Ventures, and a few angel investors.
In February 2015, it raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding. Investors at that time included Amit Ranjan of SlideShare, Deepinder Goyal of Zomato, Girish Khera of Scientific Animations, and Zishaan Hayath of ed-tech startup Toppr.
Investors
Chiratae Ventures, formerly known as IDG Ventures India, makes investments across a company’s seed-, early-, and expansion-growth stages. Funds operated by it have over $700 million under management.
It is currently in the process of raising its fourth fund. Last month, CDC Group Plc, the UK-based development finance institution, committed $10 million to this new vehicle. Last year, the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) planned to commit $20 million (around Rs 144 crore) in Chiratae's new fund.
Some of its recent investments include a bioprocess startup, bionics company Aether Biomedical, and infection prevention and control startup WeInnovate Biosolutions.
Blume Ventures, meanwhile, has invested in over 145 companies since its inception and has over $225 million in capital under management. It was set up in 2010 by Karthik Reddy and Sanjay Nath, with Ashish Fafadia joining in 2012.
The investor says companies it backs typically have a strong technology-based foundation. To this end, it has raised three funds so far, and has made bets in sectors such as cleantech, agriculture, business-to-business, real estate, retail, and SaaS.
Some of its recent investments include financial-technology firm Smallcase, education-technology company Classplus, car servicing platform Pitstop, e-mobility startup Yulu, and space-technology startup Pixxel.
