Mindtickle becomes a unicorn after SoftBank-led funding

Bengaluru: Mindtickle has raised an additional $100 million in a Series E funding round led by existing investor SoftBank Vision Fund II, as global investors continue to plow capital into India’s fast-growing technology industry.

This values the software-as-service startup at $1.2 billion, making the Pune-based company the 20th to turn a unicorn so far this year. Unicorns are startups valued at $1 billion or more.

Existing investors Norwest Venture Partners, Canaan, NewView Capital, and Qualcomm Ventures also participated in the funding round.

ET was the first to report the SoftBank-led funding on June 16.

Social commerce startup Meesho, banking tech platform Zeta and business-to-business commerce firm OfBusiness are the other startups that the Japanese tech-focused investor has led into the unicorn club this year.

Mindtickle is also the eighth Indian SaaS startup to enter the unicorn club after Freshworks, Druva, Icertis, Postman, Zenoti, Chargebee and BrowserStack.

This is a significant jump in valuation for Mindtickle. The company was valued at $500 million in November last year when it raised around $100 million, again led by SoftBank.

“Revenue leaders understand that sales readiness is a mission-critical component of their strategy to consistently meet or exceed their goals,” said Krishna Depura, co-founder and chief executive at Mindtickle. “They are taking more square ownership of these programmes, and partnering with their sales enablement, revenue operations, and training teams to create a continuous state of excellence across their organisations.”

The company, which initially serviced mid-size and large enterprises in the tech sector, has clients across industries such as financial services, pharma, medical devices, and oil and gas. Around 2,000 companies use its services, including MongoDB, Nutanix, Cloudera, and Merck & Co.

Since its last funding round, Mindtickle has consistently delivered ahead of plan across all metrics, said Sumer Juneja, partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers. “We are encouraged by their increasing customer additions, contract expansions and new product launches and acceptance. We are delighted to be increasing our exposure to Mindtickle as they enter their next phase of growth,” he said.

Mindtickle said in a statement that sales enablement technologies are estimated to grow to $4.23 billion by 2027, and the conversation intelligence market will reach $13 billion by 2025.