Weeks After 100M Funding, Indian Startup MoEngage Secures Fresh 180M Investment.
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Indian Startup MoEngage Secures Fresh 180M Investment. Image Credits: MoEngage
Indian Startup MoEngage Secures Fresh 180M Investment, a customer engagement platform used by consumer brands in 75 countries, announced a $180 million Series F follow-on transaction. The majority of the most recent funding will be used to provide liquidity to investors and employees through secondary transactions.
About $123 million of the most recent raise was secondary, including a $15 million employee tender that gave 259 current and former employees liquidity. The remaining $57 million was obtained as primary capital and used to fund the company. In addition to Schroders Capital and current investors TR Capital and B Capital, ChrysCapital and Dragon Funds lead the round. In the secondary deals, early supporters such as Eight Roads Ventures, Helion Venture Partners, Z47, and Ventureast sold their shares.
MoEngage
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According to a source close to the acquisition, MoEngage was valued at “well over” $900 million post-money, and the business was aiming for $100 million in annualized recurring income this year. These numbers were not disclosed by MoEngage.
In an interview, MoEngage’s co-founder and CEO, Raviteja Dodda (shown above), stated that the company intends to use the additional funds to further invest in its Merlin AI suite and increase its usage of AI agents to enhance decision-making and efficiency for marketing teams. By combining its analytics and transactional messaging capabilities into a more comprehensive solution, the business is also delving deeper into product and engineering teams. This move is anticipated to increase average contract prices and broaden its potential market.
Customer engagement is not always concentrated on marketing teams. According to Dodda, there are engineering and product teams that concentrate on deciphering consumer data and behavior.
Additionally, MoEngage intends to utilize a portion of its new funding to pursue strategic acquisitions, especially in the U.S. and Europe, where it will target software firms that either enhance its customer interaction platform or hasten its growth in those regions. To support its intelligence-led products, it also focuses on small AI teams.
MoEngage
With its offices in San Francisco and Bengaluru, the 11-year-old startup currently receives over 30% of its income from North America, over 25% from Europe and the Middle East, and the remaining 45% from Southeast Asia and India.
MoEngage’s late-stage status is reflected in the raise’s secondary-heavy structure, which permits early investors and staff to capture liquidity without pressuring the business into a short-term public listing. With this strategy, MoEngage is free to decide on its next course of action based on company priorities rather than investor departure schedules.
Dodda stated, “It gives us the opportunity not to have an urgency with regard to going IPO.” Depending on market circumstances and other variables, the business still plans to go public in a few years.
According to Dodda, MoEngage is aiming for compound annual growth of roughly 35% over the next three years and anticipates turning earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) positive this quarter.
MoEngage
Co-founder and CEO of MoEngage client fintech company Zeta, Bhavin Turakhia, stated that the startup has improved onboarding, activation, and cross-selling throughout important customer journeys thanks to analytics and messaging tools.
Related: Mirelo raises 41 million from Index and a16z to address the silent issue with AI video.
Some early investors were also able to withdraw completely because to the round’s secondary component. Among them is Ventureast, which supported MoEngage in 2018. On a blended basis, the VC company generated a return on investment of about ten times.
MoEngage has maintained an India-based cost structure, which he claimed has allowed it compete more successfully in the U.S. while growing the business, in contrast to many international customer engagement companies that operate with cost structures targeted at the U.S. market, according to Rao.
MoEngage has now raised over $307 million in primary capital with the most recent round. For the transaction, Avendus recommended MoEngage.
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