Sequoia Capital leads $26 million funding round in CleverTap

NEW DELHI: Sequoia Capital has led a $26-million (about Rs 180-crore) round of equity financing in San Francisco- and Mumbai-based Wiz-Rocket, which owns and operates mobile analytics and mobile marketing platform CleverTap, a transaction that has also seen the entry of investment powerhouse Tiger Global Management. The investment, which is believed to value the six-year-old company upwards of $150 million, has also seen participation by Accel Partners, an existing investor in CleverTap. Including the Series-B transaction, the company, which was founded in 2013, has now raised a shade over $40 million in funding, across three rounds.

“We will use the proceeds towards product innovation, expansion of its team globally and increasing our geographical footprint,” Anand Jain, cofounder of CleverTap, told ET. Jain, however, declined to speak on the valuation of the company, post the closure of the round.

The Series-B investment comes about 15 months after the company announced its last round of funding, which was led by Japanese diversified consumer and business services provider Recruit Holdings, through an investment arm, in January last year.


“Sequoia India is happy to lead this round of financing at one of the fastest growing SaaS startups. If you’re a product manager and don’t know what CleverTap does, you may miss that promotion you are after,” Mohit Bhatnagar, managing director at Sequoia Capital India Advisors, said. According to Jain, the company will not only double down on its existing markets, but is also in the process of expanding across Southeast Asia, excluding China and Japan.

CleverTap, which currently has about 125 employees on its rolls, anticipates doubling this number over the course of the next 12 months.

“Marketing technology is undergoing rapid transformation, and we believe Clever-Tap is well positioned to help consumer businesses drive materially higher customer lifetime values,” Scott Shleifer, Partner, Tiger Global, said in a written statement. For Tiger Global, the investment in CleverTap comes less than a month after the storied New York-based investment firm announced that Lee Fixel, the famously reticent investor, best known in India as the man who powered the rise of ecommerce giant Flipkart, was leaving the organisation.