GrexIT Inc, which operates a software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform Hiver, on Monday has raised $22 million (Rs 165 crore) in a Series B funding round led by K1 Capital, the company said.
The round also saw participation from existing investors Kalaari Capital, Kae Capital and AngelList. In 2012, Paytm Founder Vijay Shekhar Sharma had backed the firm's angel funding round.
“A big part of this investment will go into driving growth, both on marketing and sales side of things, and also significantly into product development. we are growing very fast and the aim is to touch annual run rate of $100 million next four to five years,” Niraj Ranjan Rout, Founder and CEO of Hiver said in a statement.
The company is also looking to hire talent in product development, engineering, marketing and sales function, Rout added.
With this funding round, the company has raised $22 million since its inception in 2011.
The Bengaluru- and San Jose, US-based company was part of the Morpheus Accelerator in 2010 post this it raised an initial round of angel funding of $130,000 in 2012 from the Citrix Startup Accelerator and Vijay Shekhar Sharma. In October 2018, Hiver raised $4 million in Series A round funding led by Kalaari Capital and Kae Capital.
Hiver has over 2000 customers across 30 countries like the US, UK, Australia, and Germany among others. Some customers include Harvard University, Canva, UpWork, Vacasa, Flexport among others.
The nine-year old firm was founded by Indian Institute of Technology-Kharagpur alumni Niraj Ranjan Rout and Nitesh Nandy, Hiver is a team collaboration tool for Google Workspace users that allows them to work on customer support communications directly from Gmail. It comes with built-in features including email assignment, tracking, automation, analytics, and Business Hours. It helps manage emails sent to shared inboxes such as support@, sales@, finance@.
The company also facilitates features for faster team collaboration including the ability to assign emails, share email draughts with colleagues, and save canned email responses, helping firms to improve customer service.
Within the SaaS space, Indian companies are now distinguishing themselves, with a long list of firms joining the unicorn club, according to the report. The SaaS ecosystem in India is expected to grow rapidly and increase its share to 4-5% of the global SaaS market from about 1% currently, translating into a $50-70 billion revenue opportunity by CY30. While most businesses concentrate on horizontal business software, vertical solutions and innovative infrastructure SaaS businesses are also growing in India.