Chargebee raises $125 Mn at a valuation of$1.4 Bn: India's newest unicorn

Enterprise software firm Chargebee said on April 20 that it has raised $125 million at a valuation of $1.4 Billion, making it India's newest unicorn, signaling the funding boom underway in India and continuing the wave of software unicorns.

The latest round of fundraising makes Chargebee the 11th unicorn to emerge from India in just four months of 2021, compared to 11 unicorns in all of 2020, underscoring the high investor interest. The round was co-led by Sapphire Ventures and existing investors Tiger Global, Insight Venture Partners and Steadview Capital.

US and Chennai-based Chargebee offers subscription billing and revenue management services to clients such as Freshworks, Calendly, Okta, and Study.com, among other subscription businesses. It now wants to target more businesses in segments such as ed-tech, OTT, and media. It has raised $230 million to date.

The startup was founded by Krish Subramanian, Rajaraman Santhanam, KP Saravanan, and Thiyagarajan in 2011. Interestingly, three of its co-founders- Santhanam, Saravanan, and Thiyagarajan were executives at Zoho- India's most successful bootstrapped SaaS firm- before co-founding Chargebee.