Chennai: Cisco-backed CloudCherry, an India and US-based Customer Experience Management (CEM) startup said it raised $9 million or Rs 64.5 crores in the second round of its Series A funding led by Pelion Venture Partners.
The round will see additional funds coming from existing investors, Cisco Investments, Vertex Ventures, and IDG Ventures India.
CloudCherry will use the fresh round of funds to grow its North American business and data science capabilities, said Vinod Muthukrishnan, Founder and CEO. “We want to drive depth into the markets we’re already in. With enterprise clients, our focus is to service these companies with local teams. The two fastest growing markets for us are North America and South East Asia. Within South Asia, we want to focus on Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand.”
Donald Tucker, Head of Collaboration Corporate Development and Venture Investments at Cisco, and Brett Wingo, Senior Vice President, CX Platforms at Cisco, will also join the company’s board of directors as observers.
Founded in Chennai in 2014, the SaaS player secured its first round of Series A funds of $6 million in September 2016, led by Cisco Investments and Vertex Ventures, with participation from existing investor IDG Ventures India.
Cloudcherry is focused on developing tools for brands to enhance customer experience on their websites. Among other functions, it offers products that predictively understand how changes to customer experience sales outcomes and impact financial metrics for the company.
It counts Puma, Cisco, DBS Bank and Petronas among its enterprise clientele. Since the first quarter of FY 2017, the company has added forty new enterprise clients, including Puma, said Muthukrishnan.
“We are excited to have a partner like Pelion who share our values, match our passion, and provide the know-how and network to help us accelerate our next phase of growth,” added Muthukrishnan.
Cloudcherry counts Sequoia-backed customer experience (CX) software maker Qualtrics and SaaS CX and enterprise feedback software maker, Medalia among its main competitors. Qualtrics is scheduled to launch its IPO in the coming year and Muthukrishnan said that Cloudcherry would look at raising further rounds of funding in the coming years, to take on the competition.
“In less than two years, we’ve taken market share from older, established players; drawn attention and coverage from the leading analyst firms…In another 18-24 months we may raise a significantly larger round,” he said.
