Chargebee, a subscription billing and revenue management platform, has raised $125 million in series G funding, co-led by new investor Sapphire Ventures and existing investors Tiger Global and Insight Venture Partners, along with participation from another existing investor, Steadview Capital. With this, the Chennai and San Francisco based firm enters the unicorn club (Unicorns are privately funded firms that are valued at $1 billion and above). Chargebee is now valued at $1.4 billion, which triples its valuation in less than 6 months.
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With this fresh round of investments, the company will be increasing its investment on its global expansion, and key partnerships. “We’ll increase our investment in R&D to continue building the most innovative, subscription management platform as well as our sales andmarketing to better serve customers from startups to large global enterprises. We’ll increase investment in all customer service and support functions,” Krish Subramanian, co-founder and CEO at Chargebee, told The Hindu.
When asked about the business impact due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Mr. Subramanian said that overall the pandemic accelerated the shift to subscriptions across industries - from cars to coffee pods. He noted that businesses like those in retail were able to shift to a subscription model in as little as 10 days. Citing examples, he said, “YouSign, the European e-signature provider, realized a massive opportunity within the notary market following the pandemic. With Chargebee, they were able to launch a new plan focused on this market, which went on to account for over 15% of their revenue in just the first 2 months.” He added, “Study.com realised a massive opportunity globally for e-learning solutions.With Chargebee, they were able to move into 90 new markets in under 180 days.”
Founded by Krish Subramanian, Rajaraman Santhanam, KP Saravanan and Thiyagarajan in 2011, Chargebee is used by over 17,000 companies globally including businesses like Okta and Freshworks, and startups like Calendly and Study.com. The firm has raised $230 million funding to date.
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