- Merely 3 months after acquiring the US-Bulgarian mobile marketing platform Leanplum, the US-based retention and engagement cloud company CleverTap raises $105M in a Series D round.
- The CleverTap Series D round is led by the global investment group CDPQ, which committed $75M, and is joined by the India-focused asset management firm IIFL AMC’s Tech Fund, along with existing investors Tiger Global and Sequoia India.
- The fresh funds will be invested into further strengthening the presence of CleverTap in key geographies and for the expansion of its teams.
“Our vision has been to reshape the way businesses engage with their consumers and bring the tech to MarTech. The addition of long-term investors CDPQ and IIFL AMC Tech fund to CleverTap’s existing backers, Sequoia India, Accel, Tiger Global, and Recruit Holdings is a great endorsement of the successful business we have built, the innovation we bring to the market, and the growth potential that CleverTap holds,” Sunil Thomas, co-founder and Executive Chairman, of CleverTap comments on the investment.
Besides the acquisition of Leanplum, the CleverTap Series D round follows the release of the new product of CleverTap, TesseractDB – the world’s first purpose-built database. According to the CDPQ’s Managing Director of Direct Private Equity for Asia Pacific: “CleverTap is a fast-growing SaaS company that not only has recurring revenue streams and top tier financial metrics, but also a scalable business model with large addressable markets.”
CDPQ is one of the leading long-term institutional investors in North America with total assets 💸under management of $419B and investments in more than 75 countries. The firm has invested in leading North American companies such as leading Canadian virtual care provider Dialogue and the AI travel app Hopper. As part of the investment, CDPQ will join CleverTap’s Board of Directors.
What does the CleverTap Series D round mean for the Bulgarian team of Leanplum?
In May 2022, CleverTap and Leanplum announced that they will be joining forces with the goal to build one of the world’s most powerful data engines for customer engagement and retention marketing. Under the deal, the product and features of Leanplum will be imported into the CleverTap platform to make the offering of the company stronger.
Momchil Kyurkchiev, co-founder of Leanplum and now Chief Strategy Officer at CleverTap has shared with The Recursive that the goal for the Sofia office is to expand the Bulgaria team by 20% by the end of 2022.
For eight years, Leanplum managed to grow its Sofia R&D site to a team of almost 60 employees. The acquisition of Leanplum stands at strategic importance for the local ecosystem as the Bulgarian office is said to become one of the main R&D centers of the company, together with the office in Mumbai.
“One of the unique things that we are offering to the market is working at an exciting startup, with high potential growth, and more importantly solving really hard problems. I have worked at Google, I remember how everybody wanted to work on the hard problems. We don’t have a Google or Facebook in Bulgaria, but we now have a CleverTap and Leanplum in Bulgaria. From an engineering point of view, this will be a great opportunity,” Momchil Kyurkchiev highlighted.
Overall, the investment will allow the team of Leanplum to grow and bring its product to new markets as part of CleverTap.
