Pune-based Zestl Software Pvt. Ltd, which operates an enterprise SaaS (software-as-a-service) platform for automated workflows, has raised an undisclosed amount in a pre-Series A round, the company said in a press note.
The round was jointly led by Mumbai-based Lead Angels Network, Eagle10 Ventures (a group of entrepreneurs and industry veterans) and Contrarian Vriddhi Fund, the maiden angel fund of social impact investor Contrarian Drishti Partners.
Other institutional investors include Mumbai-based early-stage investor Gemba Capital, Bengaluru-based audio visual and lighting solutions provider Genesis IT Innovations Ltd, and US- and India-based Omphalos Ventures. The round also saw participation from former EY India national director of advisory business Sunil Chandiramani and ex-Rothschild India managing director Sanjay Bhandarkar.
“Existing SaaS collaboration solutions fail to automate enterprise processes end to end. The gaps end up killing user adoption and as a result ROI (return on investment),” said Prashant Pansare, co-founder of Eagle10 Ventures.
In a telephonic interaction, Hardik Gandhi, co-founder and chief executive of Zestl, told TechCircle that the firm will use the funds for a full-scale launch of its operations in the US within the next six months. The firm will also expand its sales and marketing team after building up its customer base through partnerships, he said.
According to Zestl’s website, the company appears to have already incorporated a US-based entity, Zestl Inc., situated in Mountain View in California.
The company had previously raised an undisclosed sum in seed funding in late 2016 from a clutch of individuals.
“We are also looking to close our Series A round within the next few months and are talking to both India-based and US-based investors,” Gandhi added.
Zestl was founded in 2015 by Gandhi, Pushkar Prasad and Kapil Bhadke. The company operates an enterprise SaaS platform that provides workflow automation apps, according to its website.
An alumnus of Stanford University, Gandhi had earlier worked at Apple and Texas Instruments as part of their US-based operations. An IIT-Kharagpur graduate, co-founder Prasad (tech chief) had served at the Indian arm of US-based Mojo Networks (formerly Airtight Networks), a company specialising in solutions related to cloud-managed Wi-Fi, access, security and engagement. Bhadke, the third co-founder, is a graduate from IIT-Kanpur.
The company’s flagship product, Zvolv, is a workflow automation platform that helps large enterprises quickly create automated solutions for people-centric and data-centric processes. Without the need for a software developer, the company’s solutions identify the steps in a business process and translate them into projects and tasks with built-in forms, notifications, escalations and more, according to the firm’s website.
Gandhi said, "The Zvolv platform automates and adds structure to chaotic people/data-centric collaboration processes, helping drive organisational efficiency and faster time to market. Whether its opening new outlets/stores, launching new products, distributed data collection and business intelligence, or machine data-driven workflows, Zvolv applications can be created in a matter of days, with no developer dependence.”
The firm’s other product, TwigMe, caters more to smaller businesses and aims to ease the process of customer engagement and communication.
The company said its products are used by more than 25 clients that include global QSR (quick service restaurant) chains, retailers and FMCG (fast-moving consumer goods) companies, healthcare chains and other global services and manufacturing companies.
