Icertis raises funding, valuation triples to $2.8 billion

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup Icertis on Thursday said it has raised around $80 million as part of its Series F round, led by existing investor B Capital Group, with participation from Greycroft, Meritech Capital Partners, Premji Invest, PSP Growth, and e.ventures. Post-funding, its valuation has nearly tripled to $2.8 billion.

The Bellevue-based firm plans to use the funding to expand across Japan, South East Asia and northern Europe. It will also invest in product development, further integrating artificial intelligence (AI), ablockchain with natural language processing technologies in its product suite.

Co-founder and chief executive officer Samir Bodas said the company will also look to grow its overall team by 30-40%, with the bulk of the hiring in its engineering team in India.

Close to 900 out of 1,500 employees of Icertis are based in the country.

The funding round makes Icertis the second most valuable SaaS unicorn in the Indian startup circuit after Freshworks, which was valued at $3.5 billion in their last funding round in 2020.

Icertis has also appointed Penny Pritzker who is the founder and chairman of PSP Partners, and former US secretary of commerce in the Obama Administration, as well as Karyn Smith, general counsel at Twilio Inc., to its board of directors.

Ten-year old Icertis is a contract lifecycle management company which helps clients to manage their contracts right from request for proposals to creating a centralized repository, as well as managing and storage of these contracts. It further uses AI algorithms to maintain compliance, consistency towards local norms of each country, while ensuring better visibility of these contracts from an organization perspective.

Bodas said the company at present does not have an active clientele in verticals such as education, especially in the K-12 (kindergarten to Class XII) segment and the government. However, it has started working with federal and state agencies to help them with contract management.

“We are actively investing in our products and believe the biggest impact will come with integration of more AI, machine learning, blockchain and NLP as we look to deliver further insights to our clients in the contract management space. Today we work both on behalf of the buy and the sell side, and execute complex M&A contracts as well, making it a truly horizontal platform,” Bodas said in an interaction.

He added that the next phase of growth for the company will be "intent management" and to use tech to understand whether what was envisaged in the contract was delivered in value in the real word. The company, which isn’t profitable yet, will focus on growth in the coming years, over profitability.

Bodas also said that verticalization and going deeper will be another focus for the company, where it will work with consultancies such as Accenture and Deloitte; this will take Icertis’ platform and build solutions based on specific needs of their customers for complex and dynamic contracts in fields such as banking, wealth management and wealth contracts for high net-worth individuals.

Icertis has over 240 clients across big tech, retail, travel, transportation and pharmaceuticals and life sciences, including Apple, Microsoft, Airbus, Daimler, and Best Buy. It also works with Indian IT majors, including Wipro Ltd and Infosys Ltd.

At present, the company has executed over 10 million contracts worth more than $1 trillion, in more than 40 languages for its clients across 90 countries.

Icertis is also looking to target mid-scale companies focused on revenue of $200 million and above in its next phase of growth.

Icertis is joined by other SaaS companies, including Freshworks, Zenoti, and Druva, which share the "unicorn" tag, with a valuation of $1 billion and above.