Salesken wins $8 mn in Series A funding from Sequoia India

Salesken.ai announced that they raised $8 Mn in Series A from Sequoia India.  The funds will be used for further development of Salesken’s AI-based conversation intelligence platform (Salesken.ai) and for expansion across the Asia Pacific and North America markets.

Inside sales is a rapidly growing industry worldwide with nearly 48% of all sales teams now selling products over the phone or web conferencing tools. The inside sales industry employs over 20 million people globally and Salesken helps these teams with real-time intelligence during their sales conversations to help them win more deals. Sales teams using Salesken.ai receive intelligence on various aspects of the sales pitch, from lead qualification to navigating pricing discussions. They can also gauge the sentiments of their customers during the conversation.

Salesken’s proprietary technology does this by using machine learning and data science tools to learn successful sales tactics used by top-performing salespeople and the best-selling practices across industries.  The tool also provides sales leaders with unparalleled visibility via qualitative analytics on knowledge or skill gaps within their teams.

Surga Thilakan, co-founder and CEO, of Salesken.ai, stated, “Companies squander a third of their customer acquisition costs on preventable lead losses. They also face the unpredictability of sales outcomes and an inability to replicate success at scale. Salesken.ai helps them by enabling sales teams, in real-time, during their customer conversations, and in adopting a more scientific approach to sales management.”

The founders of Salesken, Sreeraman Vaidyanathan and Surga Thilakan bring domain expertise and insights into the skill gaps of sales teams from having coached over 20,000 sales executives.  Salesken.ai was conceived when they, along with their CTO Vaibhav Verma, shifted their approach to solving the sales skill gap problem from a behavioral science-led training approach to a data science-driven product that would provide sales reps guidance during their conversations.

“Inside sales has many unique management, training, and scaling challenges, but is often the most productive form of sales for companies across a range of industries. Salesken enables higher productivity for this segment of users and brings a step function in their performance. We look forward to working with Surga to build a category-leading company”, said Shailesh Lakhani, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India LLP

The funding round was led by Sequoia India and also featured a secondary with investors such as Unitus Ventures and Michael and Susan Dell Foundation making a partial exit. The transaction was facilitated by Masterkey Holdings.