India’s startups have nabbed 11 unicorn titles this year, and joining those ranks is Chargebee, which recently earned unicorn status. With a focus on helping businesses set up and manage subscription services to receive recurring revenue, this fintech has poised itself perfectly to address the pain point of many subscription services and SaaS companies, providing a value that has garnered much enthusiasm from backers.
The unicorn status was reached following the latest, and 6th, funding round completed by the company, which saw Chennai and San-Francisco based Chargebee triple its valuation. The Series G round was led by Sapphire Ventures, as well as existing investors Tiger Global and Insight Venture Partners. It raised $125 million, bringing Chargebee’s valuation up to $1.4 billion. In the fintech’s 10 years of operation it has raised $230 million.
Speaking on the round, Krish Subramanian, CEO and Co-founder of the fintech said, “More than ever before, businesses need their subscription revenue platform to be the reliable system of record that enables them to rapidly scale their revenue processes.”
With many businesses digitally transforming and favoring SaaS models for their services, the reliance on subscription-based payments is increasing in the industry. Without a service like that offered by Chargebee, setting up subscription payments can be a tedious and time-consuming process. Inspired by Joel Spolsky, founder of Trello, Subramanian sought to solve a simple and ‘very boring problem’ in interesting ways. With that, Chargebee was founded. Users of the fintech today benefit from the easy and efficient ways that the service allows businesses to set up and mange billing, subscription, revenue operations, and compliance. Even large businesses are able to set up subscription models of varying complexity in as little as 10 days.
Today, the company has expanded from Chennai to its San Francisco headquarters to serve over 3,000 customers across the U.S. and Europe. Over 100 currencies and dozens of major payment gateways (such as Stripe and PayPal) are supported via Chargebee. Its clients include brands such as cloud software Okta, business software firm Freshworks, calendar invites manager Calendly, and Japanese tech giant Fujitsu. According to Subramanian, the company’s revenue double over the past 12 months with clients seeing a revenue spike of 125% by using the service.
While it hasn’t been shared what the latest funding will be used for, no doubt Chargebee will be expanding into further regions as it offers its services more comprehensively.
