MindTickle, a startup that helps companies improve their sales, announced Sunday it raised $100 million in fresh funding. SoftBank Vision Fund 2 led the round, which is a combination of equity and debt financing. Existing investors including Accel Partners and Qualcomm Ventures also participated.
Sales can be a volatile, highly competitive space that often leads to burnout. MindTickle aims to combat this by “gamifying” the process, providing sales teams with the coaching and insights they need to succeed when that “moment of truth” with the customer arrives. The platform offers features like roleplaying exercises to help users practice their pitch and micro-learning opportunities to ensure they stay sharp — all of which are personalized for the user thanks to AI and machine learning. It also gives managers the data they need to more efficiently review, score and coach their teams on how to improve their close rate and satisfy customers.
In the end, MindTickle’s mobile-first set-up and game-like user experience is designed to keep sales teams entertained and engaged, ultimately improving their employer’s bottom line.
“Our mission is to help companies transform the capabilities and behaviors of their teams to generate a meaningful, measurable impact on their revenue and brand,” MindTickle co-founder and CEO Krishna Depura said in a statement. “As customers become increasingly demanding and remote work becomes more common, organizations realize the need to reskill and upskill their employees on an ongoing basis to deliver value in each customer interaction.”
Because of this trend, Depura says MindTickle has been experiencing “strong demand and usage growth” over the last several quarters. TechCrunch reported that the company’s revenue has grown by more than 170 percent in the past year, and that it hopes to end the year with an annual recurring revenue of more than $30 million.
Plus, this year alone MindTickle was named a top product for enterprises and ranked fifth best product for sales by G2, a popular marketplace for software.
“MindTickle’s track record of growth, quality of product and marquee customer base highlights their strengths.” Sumer Juneja, a partner at SoftBank Investment Advisers, said in a statement. “By delivering engaging and personalized training to users, MindTickle is uniquely placed to support businesses to increase revenue generation and extend critical capabilities within their existing workforce.”
To keep up the momentum, MindTickle will use this fresh funding to further develop its product and fuel its expansion in Europe and the United States. The company is also now hiring, with dozens of open tech positions at its San Francisco headquarters and office in India.
