The year is showing some sort of good luck for the startups in the country. India is heavily promoting startups and the culture they bring along with them. The Indian government is aggressively following an initiative “Startup India”. The country has around 42000 startups operating in full swing and they are creating more than 4.7 lakh jobs per year.
Some of these startups enter the golden Unicorn Club. It is like a “club of rich”, for the startups, the valuations of which increase to more than USD 1 billion. Such startups go through various rounds of funding, and with every round, their value increases, and then finally a time comes when they have secured an entry ticket to the prestigious Unicorn Club.
We are in August currently, and the year has already seen the making of 19 unicorns. And now, a new unicorn has being made. The startup Mindtickle as announced on August 05, 2021, has received funding of USD 100 million. The round of funding was Series E round led by Softbank Vision Fund 2.
Post this round of funding, the value of the startup has increased to USD 1.2 billion, thus becoming a unicorn. The existing investors also participated in this round of funding. The list includes- Norwest Venture Partners, Canaan, NewView Capital, and Qualcomm Ventures. With this round, the total funds raised by the startup have come up to USD 281 million.
Mindtickle has become the 20th unicorn of the country whose value has crossed in billions and has entered the Unicorn Club.
With the funds raised, the startup aims to increase its database of clients, make acquisitions and improve its products. This valuation has doubled from the last round of funding which happened in November 2020. That funding round was also led by SoftBank. With this round, the total funds raised by the startup have come to USD 281 million.
About the unicorn startup
Founded by Krishna Dupra, Deepak Diwakar and Nishant Mungali, Mindtickle is engaged in providing calls sales readiness technology. It is an artificial intelligence-based sales tool that helps in improving selling, product knowledge, and creating awareness of the competition. The template of the 2011 founded startup can be used by the companies which can customize it with their own data and content.
The clientele of the startup includes Johnson & Johnson, Wipro, Splunk, Merck, AppDynamics, and Jupiter Network. Many Fortune 500 and Forbes Global 2000 companies use the platform of the startup to define excellence, build knowledge, align content, analyze performance, and optimize behavior. The startup is known to be the market leader by the top industry and is ranked as #1 enterprise software product and #5 sales software product by G2.
The startup works on the following ideologies-
•Creating impact for the customers
•People matter the most
The startup has been recognised as one of the highest-rated private cloud computing companies to work for, thus ensuring how amazing and productive the work is.
The Chief Executive Officer of the startup is Krishna Depura and Nishant Mungali is the Chief Product Officer. The startup has big names in its investors’ list like- Accel, Canaan Partners, NEA, New View Capital, Norwest Venture Partners, SoftBank Vision Fund, and Qualcomm Ventures. It has been voted as the Leader in Sales Coaching in 2021, the leader in Sales Performance Management in 2021, Momentum Leader in Sales Training and Onboarding in 2021, and many others.
About SoftBank Vision Fund
Founded in 2017 in Cambridge, United Kingdom, SoftBank Vision Fund is a Venture Capital Fund and is a part of the SoftBank Group. Founded by SoftBank Group and Masayoshi Son, some of the notable investments of the venture fund are-
Arm Ltd, DoorDash, Mapbox, Fanatics, Flipkart, Uber, PolicyBazaar, Lenskart, The Hut Group, DiDi, Cruise, C2FO, Compass, Oyo Rooms, and many others. The list is long.
The largest investor of the fund is the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, which has contributed USD 45 billion out of the USD 100 billion funds. Other investors are SoftBank, Apple, Foxconn, Qualcomm, and Sharp.
What does the founder say?
Krishna Depura who is the co-founder and the CEO of Mindtickle made a statement saying that most companies have been operating in remote, digital transformation mode past 1 year, and because of this sales skills have become very important. This has somewhere quadrupled the market opportunity of the startup.
What does the investor say?
Munish Verma, who is the Managing Partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers said that the organization is impressed by the performance of the startup in creating and becoming a category leader in the sales readiness space. He further added that the product has become an important part of a sales organization and he showed his excitement in being a part of the growth of the company.
The startup has something promising to offer. Let us wait and see what the future holds for it.
Edited by Aishwarya Ingle
