SoftBank Group Corp. of Japan is in advance talk with Mindtickle (1), a Saas startup, to led a 100 million USD round. The company would mark its first deal in a software-as-a-product firm from its India team with the investment.
In July 2019, the company stood the valuation at 250 million USD after receiving 40 million funds from Norwest Venture Partners led fundraise. With the investment from SoftBank, Mindtickle would double its valuation to 500 to 600 USD.
Krishna Depua, Mohit Garg, Deepak Diwakar, and Nishant Mungali founded Mindtickle in 2011. The Pune and San Francisco-based startup help firms increase their sales capabilities via sales training, onboarding, and working on each viewpoint of sales, practicing, and improving its using technology.
SoftBank Looking At Mindtickle As a Safe Bet
The products of Mindtickle help onboard clients and offer data-driven coaching for a high sales offering. It also hosts virtual events and track relationships with partners and many other things.
As per sources, Mindtickle is likely to record 20 to 25 million USD revenue in FY 2021. Mindtickle has several investors, including Accel, Canaan Partners, a Silicon Valley-based venture capital firm, Qualcomm Ventures, and New Enterprise Associates.
According to the anonymous source, firms consider SaaS startups as the safest bet in the tech segment for investment. The economics of space has always been better compared to consumer internet companies. Today, there is a lot of room to grow, even for an established company. Hence, the valuation multiples of the companies are rising.
Previously, SoftBank has invested in several other Indian companies. It includes Ola, a ride-hailing firm, Oyo, as hotelier startup, Paytm, a digital financial services firm, Policybazaar, an insurance aggregator, Lenskart, the eyewear retailer, and many others.
Notably, the current year is turning out to be busy for SaaS startups. They are observing a rapid rise in funds at higher valuation during the pandemic. The valuation of Postman, an API startup, rose to 2 billion USD in 2020 from 350 million USD in 2019. Simultaneously, Freshworks, valued at 3.5 billion USD, has secured more than 200 million USD this year.
