Tag: SMEs

  • OfBusiness Introduces Nexizo, an AI-Powered Discovery Platform Designed for SMEs

    For small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs) in the industrial and infrastructure industries, the Gurugram-based B2B marketplace OfBusiness has introduced Nexizo, a new AI-powered discovery tool. Through the use of cutting-edge AI technology, the platform seeks to expedite procurement procedures, simplify the process of finding qualified buyers, and offer market insights for competitive intelligence and raw material price discovery.

    BidAssist was a comparable platform that OfBusiness had previously introduced. The team did, however, clarify that Nexizo targets larger private-sector companies and offers more sophisticated features tailored to their intricate requirements, in contrast to BidAssist, which concentrates on government tenders.

    While Nexizo may be for larger, more established organisations as the complexity and sophistication of the solution increase multifold, BidAssist will always be geared towards government contractors (natural market mechanisms slant its user structure towards tiny & mid-sized companies). Furthermore, in a social media post, Pyuish Upadhyay, CBO, Digital at OfBusiness, stated that Nexizo will eventually target the private sector.

    Platform Focuses on Building Cohesive Vertical Commerce Ecosystem

    The platform, according to the company, is a step in the direction of creating a unified vertical commerce ecosystem that combines software, finance, and materials. From an insights platform to a full-fledged digital shop, OfBusiness has developed to enable end-to-end transactions for high-value marketplaces. According to the CBO, the brand is already targeting INR 2,000 crore this fiscal year (in just 24 months).

    The announcement coincides with OfBusiness’s preparations for a possible $1 billion initial public offering (IPO) in the second half of 2025. The company generated revenue of INR 19,296 crore in FY24, up from INR 15,343 crore in FY23, and its profit increased by 30% to INR 603 crore in FY24.

    More About OfBusiness’ IPO

    Asish Mohapatra and Ruchi Kalra founded OfBusiness in 2015, and to date, the company has raised over $800 million from investors. SoftBank, Tiger Global, Z47 (previously Matrix Partners), Creation Investments, Alpha Wave Global, and Norwest Venture are among the investors in the business. Through its IPO, which will include a new $200 million issue, it hopes to raise up to $1 billion. It wants to be valued between $6 billion and $9 billion. Five investment bankers—Axis Capital, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Citigroup, and Bank of America—were named the book runners for OfBusiness’s initial public offering (IPO) bid in November. Cofounder Jain stated at the time that OfBusiness will prioritise increasing its profitability prior to pursuing an IPO.


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  • ActiveCampaign: Leader in Customer Experience Automation

    Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by ActiveCampaign.

    In this modern era, every business is striving to provide a better customer experience to their targeted customers. Customer experience is a term used to define the sum of experiences that people have during the whole product or service cycle.

    Usually, enterprises find it challenging to control how customers feel about their relationship with their products or services. It is when customer experience automation tools and software come in handy.

    ActiveCampiagn is a Chicago-based private company that offers software for customer experience automation (CXA) to small and medium-sized businesses worldwide. Let’s dive in to learn more about ActiveCampaign- its startup story, founders, funding, growth, and more details.

    ActiveCampaign – Company Highlights

    Company Name ActiveCampaign
    Headquarters Chicago, Illinois, United States
    Primary Industry Software Development
    Founders Jason VandeBoom
    Founded In 2003
    Website Activecampaign.com

    ActiveCampaign – About
    ActiveCampaign – Founders and Team
    ActiveCampaign – Startup Story
    ActiveCampaign – Mission and Vision
    ActiveCampaign – Name, Logo, and Tagline
    ActiveCampaign – Business Model
    ActiveCampaign – Products and Services
    ActiveCampaign – Challenges Faced
    ActiveCampaign – Funding and Investors
    ActiveCampaign – Mergers and Acquisitions
    ActiveCampaign – Patents and Trademarks
    ActiveCampaign – Growth
    ActiveCampaign – Awards and Achievements
    ActiveCampaign – Competitors
    ActiveCampaign – Future Plans

    ActiveCampaign – About

    ActiveCampaign is a cloud software platform that offers customer experience automation, apps & integration, custom objects, machine learning, services, mobile app, and developer resources. It combines transactional email, email marketing, sales automation, marketing automation, and CRM categories.

    The company is known for serving technology, education, non-profit, small businesses, fitness, real estate, entertainment & events, and travel & hospitality industries in 170 countries. It has 5 more premises in the US, Australia, Brazil, and Ireland. Moreover, it integrates with over 850 applications, including Slack, Facebook, Salesforce, WordPress, Shopify, and Gmail.

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    ActiveCampaign – Founders and Team

    Founder and CEO of ActiveCampaign, Jason VandeBoom has also founded BoardChair. He possesses multiple skills including marketing, email marketing, online marketing, strategic partnerships, product management and development, SaaS, and web marketing.

    Furthermore, the company employs more than 1050 employees at all its premises.

    Jason VandeBoom - Founder, ActiveCampaign
    Jason VandeBoom – Founder, ActiveCampaign

    ActiveCampaign – Startup Story

    Founded by Jason VandeBoom in 2003, ActiveCampaign commenced its journey as a consulting firm and was then established as an on-premises software provider to help small and medium-sized businesses automate their marketing tasks and manage contacts.

    The company later transitioned from on-premises software to a software-as-a-service business, the main focus of which is to automate marketing and sales.

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    ActiveCampaign – Mission and Vision

    The mission of the company is to help growing businesses connect and engage meaningfully with their targeted customers. When it comes to the vision statement, ActiveCampaign accelerates the growth of each company with only an automation platform designed for providing better customer experiences.

    Furthermore, it is looking forward to emerging as the renowned leader and fastest-growing marketing and customer experience platform, recognized for creating a new category that replaces traditional and enterprise-focused platforms. Additionally, the company focuses on creating a global ecosystem of entrepreneurs and growth-minded businesses.

    ActiveCampaign – Name, Logo, and Tagline

    ActiveCampaign Logo
    ActiveCampaign Logo

    ActiveCampaign follows a unique representation of using its logo with different colors. Primarily the company uses its logo in white color when displayed on dark background. And when it’s displayed on a light background, it uses primary blue as the base color.

    Getting Started with ActiveCampaign

    ActiveCampaign – Business Model

    ActiveCampaign connects every tool and channel that an organization uses in its business for engaging customers at each stage of the customer lifecycle. This platform collects data from email marketing, digital advertising, website, and social media to tailor personalized touchpoints with the organization’s contacts while ensuring that the marketing is effective and engaging.

    The company automates the marketing and sales channel so that a firm can focus on the personal touches for its business to stand out and ensure that it hasn’t missed any step with its targeted customers.

    ActiveCampaign – Products and Services

    The products and services of the company are classified into 4 categories – marketing, sales, e-commerce, and transactional. Marketing offers multiple solutions- marketing automation, email marketing, site tracking, landing pages, personalization, and forms.

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    CRM, sales automation, lead scoring, win probability, and inbox extensions are covered in the Sales category. The E-commerce category allows integration with several e-commerce apps and the Transactional category offers access to email API, SMTP email, email delivery, transactional email templates, and inbound emails.

    ActiveCampaign – Challenges Faced

    Some features that ActiveCampaign still needs to work on are the platform’s email editor and occasional slow performance. Moreover, customers find it difficult to edit multiple emails in automation and they have to build everything – identifying inactive contacts, delivering lead magnets, or adjusting granular subscription preferences- from scratch.

    ActiveCampaign – Funding and Investors

    ActiveCampaign has been able to raise a total of $360 million over 3 funding rounds. Furthermore, the company’s latest funding round – Series C Round was undertaken on April 21, 2021, in which it raised a total of $300 million. It is backed by multiple investors and the main ones are Tiger Global Management, Dragoneer Investment Group, Silversmith Capital Partners, and Susquehanna Growth Equity.

    Date Round Number of Investors Money Raised Lead Investor
    April 21, 2021 Series C 4 $240 million Tiger Global Management
    January 28, 2020 Series B 2 $100 million Susquehanna Growth Equity
    October 11, 2016 Series A 1 $20 million Silversmith Capital Partners

    ActiveCampaign – Mergers and Acquisitions

    It acquired two companiesPostmark and DMARC Digests. Postmark offers transactional email services and DMARC Digests is recognized for offering email authentication and monitoring service. Both these service offerings enhance ActiveCampaign’s capability to offer CRM along with transactional messages with sales and market automation.

    ActiveCampaign – Patents and Trademarks

    It has 4 registered trademarks categorized into the ‘Scientific and technological services’ class.

    ActiveCampaign – Growth

    In 2022, the annual revenue of ActiveCampaign hit $165 million with 65% YOY. the platform’s pricing is $180 per year with its current valuation worth $3 billion. Talking about the company’s customer base, it has more than 140K active users and is serving over 180K businesses. The monthly app download growth is estimated to be 9.06%. Moreover, the employee count has increased by 13%.

    ActiveCampaign – Awards and Achievements

    ActiveCampaign has garnered a myriad of prestigious awards as the leader in its industry. Some recent awards that the company earned are:

    • Best Email Marketing Tool & Best Email deliverability 2023 by ToolTester
    • 2022 Chicago Top Workforces by Chicago Tribune
    • 2022 Tech Cares Award Winner by TrustRadius
    • 2022 APPEALIE SaaS + Software Award Winner by APPEALIE
    • Best Companies for Remote Workers 2022 by Quartz
    • Cloud 100 by Forbes
    • 2022 Sales and Marketing Technology Awards by The Intelligence Group
    • The Top 100 Software Companies of 2022 by The Software Report

    ActiveCampaign – Competitors

    Some of its main competitors are:

    • AVADA Email
    • ConvertKit
    • GetResponse
    • HubSpot
    • Mailchimp
    • Klaviyo
    • Constant
    • MailerLite

    ActiveCampaign – Future Plans

    ActiveCampaign is committed to its customer success and will continue to utilize the resources required for making Postmark a winning solution for small and medium businesses. Moreover, the product-first company plans to continue investing in and prioritizing its roadmap for innovation.

    FAQs

    What tools does ActiveCampaign offer for customer experience automation?

    ActiveCampaign offers email marketing, marketing automation, CRM, messaging, and personalized content tools for customer experience automation.

    Does ActiveCampaign offer mobile app support?

    Yes, ActiveCampaign offers mobile app support for both iOS and Android platforms. The app provides access to managing contacts, sending campaigns, viewing analytics, and updating deals on the go.

    What are the challenges faced by ActiveCampaign?

    Some features that ActiveCampaign still needs to work on are the platform’s email editor and occasional slow performance.

  • Recordent: Credit Management Platform to Secure Your Business Growth

    Company Profile is an initiative by StartupTalky to publish verified information on different startups and organizations. The content in this post has been approved by Recordent.

    Credit management reinforces a company’s liquidity and improves cash flow if done properly. Credit management helps in managing customer risks and accounts receivables. There are several businesses running on credit terms. Such businesses need timely payments and a transparent cash-flow management. Recordent helps them in managing payments. Recordent is a tech-driven platform that provides credit management services to SMEs, rental companies, and large corporates. Their services helps in providing better and transparent cash-flow management and builds trust among customers which consequently helps in securing business growth.

    Read the Success story of Recordent and know more about the startup, founders, the idea of starting up, business model, and its journey towards growth.

    Recordent – Company Highlights

    Startup Name Recordent
    Headquarters Hyderabad
    Industry Re-inventing Credit Management
    Founded 2020
    Founders Harish Mamtani and Winny Patro

    Recordent – About
    Recordent – Industry
    Recordent – Founders and Team
    Recordent – Idea & Startup Story
    Recordent – Name, Tagline, and Logo
    Recordent – Business Model & Revenue Model
    Recordent – Product & Services
    Recordent – Marketing
    Recordent – Challenges Faced
    Recordent – Funding
    Recordent – Revenue
    Recordent – Recognition and Achievements
    Recordent – Partnerships
    Recordent – Future Plans
    Recordent – FAQs

    Recordent – About

    Recordent, is an innovative technology platform focused on providing credit management services, enabling businesses in their secured growth. Their solutions are designed for better cash-flow management and business expansion while creating trust and transparency in seller-buyer relationships through data.

    Recordent’s long term vision is to enable trust and accountability for businesses that offer a service, credit or a loan to their customers. The Recordent team work with a single aim to empower businesses to reduce their credit and financial risks through its solutions.

    Recordent – Industry

    Recordent largely operate for the SMEs industry. The current market size stands at $27 bn. Recordent takes valuable information from reports of Atradius, TransUnion & BCG along with the Govt. MSME ministry website.

    In terms of the market growth, Recordent anticipate a 20% YoY growth for the coming 5 years.


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    Recordent – Founders and Team

    Harish Mamtani is the founder of Recordent, and Winny Patro is the co-founder.

    Harish Mamtani - Co-Founder of Recordent
    Harish Mamtani – Co-Founder of Recordent

    Harish comes on board with exceptional experience in the education sector. He is the Founder & board member of Seed Schools that was founded in March 2013 to invest in and provide curriculum, training, and management services to high quality low-cost private schools (LCPS) in India. He is also the board member for SoftWear Automation, a company disrupting the $100 billion sewn products industry by creating autonomous sewn good worklines for Home Goods, Footwear & Apparel. Harish Mamtani is more focused towards fundraising, partnerships and growth for Recordent.

    Winny Patro is the CEO & Co-Founder of Recordent.

    Winny Patro - Co-Founder of Recordent
    Winny Patro – Co-Founder of Recordent

    Winny Patro manages Day to day operations and running the company. He comes with over 12+Years of work experience in public sector, entrepreneurship, business consulting and coaching. Currently, he is spearheading and managing the day to day operations and running of Recordent.

    Harish & Winny met in 2017 for a social media impact project. Since, Winny was working with government bodies, and that was the first time they spoke. In around 2019, they were quite concerned and shared similar thoughts on the current MSME industry’s payment cycles and credit risks involved. They came together in a quick thought and wanted to start a company that could solve the standing issues for the MSME sector. And that is how the journey for Recordent began.

    Recordent Team
    Recordent Team

    They are now a team of 35+ driven individuals and subject matter experts that have been working on Recordent’s goals to achieve a scenario where businesses are at a position to make sound decisions in terms of finance, and overall credit reduction.

    Recordent – Idea & Startup Story

    Delayed customer payments was a pain point that both Harish and Winny Patro experienced in the companies that they were running earlier. Their inspiration came from this shared peril where they began thinking on the lines to find a startup that could provide solutions for delayed payments and enable businesses to reduce their credit risks.

    The research that went into was first to deep dive into how the trade credit sector operates, and how manufacturing to the last mile delivery value chain works, the trade credit practices and how the credit practices are. How the delayed payments are furthermore affecting the value chain. The founders spoke with key people in the trade credit sector, in trade associations and with bankers to understand the viability of their idea, and that gave us a kickstart to all activities that are currently happening at Recordent.

    Recordent Logo
    Recordent Logo

    The name of the startup was derived by bringing in the most important factor for SMEs that is to track, collate or simply, record their due payments. Furthermore, Recordent came from the idea of ‘recording’ all key business collections and invoices on a unified platform.

    Record + Payment = Recordent

    They have recently revamped their branding and logo. Recordent’s new logo depicts growth, and that is why it is a slightly upward arrow. The yellow color in the logo represents optimis, while the lighter blue in the middle stands for ambitions, and finally the darker blue shade represents trust, a solid foundation for Recordent.

    Their tagline is ‘Lower your risk. Power Growth’. It simply talks about businesses to lower their risks, and therefore empower growth.

    Recordent – Business Model & Revenue Model

    Recordent’s platform enables businesses to submit their customer dues/invoices on a regular basis to collect payments faster and on-time. Inspired from the Credit Bureau model, Recordent informs customers on how their positive payment track record can be viewed by other businesses & lenders to offer better terms on credit or a loan; thus, motives and creates urgency to pay dues sooner than later.

    Recordent – Product & Services

    Recordent is a technology platform that enables businesses to improve collections by credit profiling their customers; and reducing risk by providing insights into the payment history of prospective customers. We’ve partnered with Equifax, Leading credit bureau for businesses particularly MSMEs to make better credit decisions before offering credit against goods and services by providing a consent based comprehensive credit report of potential customers. The startup provides credit reports of businesses, entities and individuals with insights into their payment history for a better financial or business decision.

    Recordent – Marketing

    The first 100 customers came on board completely through direct selling and through associations. Recordent adopted the digital route post reaching a considerable number of members. They now operate in a hybrid marketing model which is a combination of direct selling and digital methods. Their most successful marketing campaign so far has been to have done sms, and marketing affiliations with trade credit associations.

    Recordent – Challenges Faced

    The initial market that Recordent went after were schools and educational institutions. As the pandemic hit and the schools and institutions shut, the markets were slightly tough to operate on given the current situations. The company soon went ahead with a B2B marketing model, and that is how they put together Recordent, and its solutions.


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    Recordent – Revenue

    Currently, Recordent generates a revenue of 4lacs per month, and they have a user base 12,000+ businesses. Some of its notable clients include Udaan, Faith Lumber Pvt Ltd, Pennar industries and Sterling. Their plan for the next 1-2 years is to cater to at least 40,000 businesses and empower their financial well being and fuel their growth.

    Recordent – Funding

    Recordent has raised a funding of $400K in November 2021.

    Date Stage Amount Investors
    November 2021 Angel Investment $400K Family Office of Kantamaneni & IIM Calcutta Innovation Park and other angel investors from India and the US

    Recordent – Recognition and Achievements

    Recordent’s constant endeavors are targeted towards building a trustworthy and solution-oriented platform. Recordent is now ISO 27001 certified, a worldwide standard certification that indicates a commitment to data security and assurance that data assets are safe.

    Recordent – Partnerships

    We’ve also partnered with Equifax India to help businesses particularly, MSMEs to make better credit decisions before offering credit against goods and services by providing a consent based comprehensive credit report of potential customers.

    Its partnership with Equifax US aims to reduce trade-related risks for Indian exporters and importers who trade with U.S. companies. The solution enables Indian exporters to check the credit history of their U.S. business clients. These checks save on financing costs, increase competitiveness and expand commercial activity between U.S. and Indian businesses. Indian importers can also make use of the information to ensure their purchases are from valid and creditworthy businesses.


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    Recordent – Future Plans

    The coming future, the focus will be to keep up the tech oriented solutions and spend time in customer acquisition. Recordent’s major focus areas will be collaborations with complementary fintech and banks for providing financing options to businesses, invoice reconciliation, and adding more services and features to the tech platform for further ease of use.

    Recordent – FAQs

    When was Recordent founded?

    Recordent was founded in 2020.

    Who are the founders of Recordent?

    Harish Mamtani and Winny Patro are the founders of Recordent.

    Who are the competitors of Recordent?

    Some of the competitors of Recordent are:

    • Invoiced
    • YayPay by Quadient
    • Tesorio
    • Lockstep
    • Versapay

    Has Recordent received any funding?

    Yes, Recordent has raised a total funding of $400K.