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MUMBAI: Chargebee, which runs a software-as-a-service-based subscription management platform, on Tuesday said it has raised $250 million in a funding co-led by Tiger Global Management and Sequoia Capital, that pushed up the company’s valuation by 2.5 times to $3.5 billion.
The round also saw participation from existing investors, including Insight Partners, Sapphire and Steadview Capital.
Chargebee, operated by Chargebee Technologies Pvt Ltd, has so far raised $470 million with the latest fundraise. It last raised $125 million at $1.4 billion valuation in April 2021.
The company plans to use the fresh funds for product innovation and global expansion to support the billing and revenue needs of current and future subscription businesses, as well as strategic corporate growth initiatives.
Chargebee claimed it has been witnessing a demand spike in Growing Subscription and SaaS businesses.
Quoting a UBS financial services report, Chargebee said the subscription economy will grow to $1.5 trillion by 2025, and will thus give the company an opportunity to expand its customers globally.
"As subscription offerings continue to rapidly evolve, our focus remains on providing a flexible growth engine to power, capture and understand revenue, all in real time.
This round of funding will drive innovation to empower the next generation of businesses leveraging subscription billing models to quickly start, scale and transform," said Krish Subramanian, Chief Executive Officer and Co-Founder of Chargebee.
Chargebee, founded in 2011 by Subramanian, Saravanan KP, Rajaraman Santhanam and Thiyagarajan T, manages revenue operations for subscription-based businesses for startups and larger enterprises.
The company counts Freshworks, Calendly, Doodle and Pret a Manger, among others, as its clients.
Chargebee said its platform captures the entire revenue lifecycle from first interaction to the closing of the books each month, empowering teams to make business growth decisions with confidence.
The company said it recently expanded offerings and built a unified revenue management platform with strategic acquisitions of leaders in revenue recognition, called as RevLock.
Chargebee also added Brightback, a platform that churns deflection and retention, it said.
The company said its platform has also added capabilities to optimise revenue growth with new payment methods and gateways, which support for one-time payments to meet local tax and e-voicing regulatory and compliance requirements, over the last year.
These capabilities have enhanced reporting and analytics and have updated integrations with ERPs (enterprise resource planning) like Netsuite and Microsoft Dynamics and CRMs (customer relationship management) like Hubspot and Zoho to support more complex sales motions.
The company said it also expanded globally with new offices and investments in Australia and India and partnerships with industry leaders including GoCardless, Salesforce, Hubspot and PayPal.
"We believe every company will be a subscription company in the future. The predictability of a subscription business model is extremely attractive, and Chargebee is the leading revenue management partner for the subscription economy," said Tejeshwi Sharma, Managing Director, Sequoia India.
The company had joined the coveted unicorn club in 2021, when it raised $125 million in Series G round from Sapphire Ventures, Tiger Global, Insight Venture Partners and Steadview Capital. In October 2020, the company had raised $55 million in a Series F funding round from Insight Partners.
Chargebee, which has offices in San Francisco, Amsterdam, Salt Lake City and Chennai, has evolved from offering automating billing operations to managing end-to-end subscription workflows, including revenue operations and compliance.
