facebook-page-view
Advertisement

Sequoia’s scale-up programme Surge invests $1.5 mn in SaaS startup Seekify

By Narinder Kapur

  • 18 Dec 2019
Sequoia’s scale-up programme Surge invests $1.5 mn in SaaS startup Seekify
L to R: Ajeet Singh Kushwaha and Arihant Jain, co-founders at Seekify

Seekify Technologies Pvt. Ltd, a software-as-a-service startup focused on customer experience, has raised $1.5 million (Rs 10.6 crore at current exchange rate) in seed funding from Sequoia Capital India’s startup scale-up programme, Surge.

Angel investors also participated in the seed funding, including Avatar Venture Partners founding partner Nishant Rao, 1mg co-founder Gaurav Agarwal and HealthKart founder Sameer Maheshwari.

In a statement, Gurugram-based Seekify said that it will use the capital it has raised to enhance its technological infrastructure, as well as hiring talent across key functions. The company says its platform is also now available in beta for enterprises, and that it has started project pilots with customers around the world.

Advertisement

“The greater responsibility is to build a superstar team of people who believe in the vision of Seekify. We believe in People over Product over Profits -- great people will build a great product and profit will follow,” Seekify co-founder and chief executive Arihant Jain said.

Venture Partners’ Rao said he was confident in his investment because of Seekify’s co-founders (Jain and Ajeet Kushwaha) and their understanding of the customer experience space.

The startup, founded in June this year, says its platform can be integrated with software suites of different businesses, allowing them to aggregate data related to their customer experience. This lets its clients set clear goals and act upon data-driven insights using artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Advertisement

It was part of Surge’s second cohort, which included 20 startups from across India and Southeast Asia. Another member of that cohort, Bijak, recently announced that it had raised $2.5 million (around Rs 17.74 crore) from firms such as impact venture fund Omnivore, Omidyar Network India, Surge, and early-stage investor Better Capital.

Deals in the SaaS space

The SaaS segment across industries has been buzzing with investor activity in recent months. The rapid progress of frontier technologies such as artificial intelligence and natural language processing resulted in a number of SaaS startups springing up.

Advertisement

Earlier this week, marketing intelligence startup Slintel Inc. raised $1.5 million (around Rs 10.6 crore) in a seed funding round led by Bengaluru-based Stellaris Venture Partners.

Tookitaki, a firm that develops artificial intelligence-based sustainable compliance solutions for financial institutions, closed its Series A funding round last month, raising $19.2 million (Rs 137.4 crore) from investors including Viola Fintech and global venture firm SIG Asia Investment.

That month, cloud-based software firm Freshworks Inc. raised $150 million (Rs 1,081 crore) in a Series H round led by Sequoia Capital, CapitalG (formerly Google Capital) and Accel, which is the company’s first investor.

Advertisement

Share article on

Advertisement
Advertisement