LeadSquared - What Makes Them The New-Age SaaS Platform Company?

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What is Software Development? In an uncomplicated way, the software is a collection of computer programs and data all stored in the memory of a computer for diverse roles.

In this particular industry - software development has emerged as the path for many IT companies. These companies offer SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) platform that delivers multiple applications over the internet. Nowadays, companies that offer SaaS platforms offer more than just basic functions like product management. The SaaS platform includes features like new-age automation, which helps many enterprises in streamlining the processes for sales to give an exact picture of their marketing efforts.

Founded in 2011 by four engineers Nilesh Patel, Prashant Singh, and Sudhakar Gorti, LeadSquared is a state-of-the-art SaaS platform that offers complete sales, marketing, and onboarding automation solutions.

In this article, we bring you all the relevant information regarding LeadSquared, its business and revenue model, funding and investors, its founders, growth, and more.

LeadSquared - Company Highlights

LeadSquared - About and How does it work?
LeadSquared - Industry details
LeadSquared - Founders and Team
LeadSquared - Mission and Vision
LeadSquared - Startup Story
LeadSquared - Business & Revenue Model
LeadSquared - Revenue Growth
Leadsquared - Products and Services
LeadSquared - Funding and Investors
LeadSquared - Awards and Achievements
LeadSquared - Shareholding
LeadSquared - Partners
LeadSquared - Online and Social Media Presence
LeadSquared - Competitors
LeadSquared - Future Plans

LeadSquared - About and How does it work?

Designed as a SaaS platform, LeadSquared is for sales execution and marketing automation that enables firms to track, nurture, and manage prospects. It has customers crossing more than 2,000 across 40 countries. Some of the customers are from top industries like financial services, healthcare, education, marketplace CRM, automotive, travel, and real estate. The companies from these industries include HCL Technologies, Byjus, Omaxe, Happiest Minds, Zoomcar, Coldwell Banker, Bharti AXA, UTI Asset Management, and NIIT among various others.

The company works by implementing automation to construct thoroughly connected, empowered, and self-sufficient sales groups for organizations.  Its sales technology stack includes sales execution, digital onboarding, and marketing processes along with various other automation solutions. The major goal of the company can be said to give its users the sort of support that boosts their closure and general efficiency, allowing them to control business pipelines with much ease and convenience.

LeadSquared - Industry details

The most booming industry, the software as a service market is assumed to grow at a very rapid rate. The industry is expected to increase at a CAGR of 27.5% from $130.69 billion in 2021 to $716.52 billion in 2028.

LeadSquared - Founders and Team

LeadSquared is founded by Nilesh Patel, Sudhakar Gorti, and Prashant Singh. Sukhbir Kalsi is the Vice President of LeadSqaured.

Nilesh Patel

Nilesh Patel is the Chief Executive Officer at LeadSquared. He holds an engineering degree from Delhi University and worked for IBM for four years in their microprocessor test tools group before creating Proteans, which is a leader in software product development. At LeadSquared, he specializes in assisting firms with high-volume, high-volume sales to enhance sales execution and boost sales efficiency.

Prashant Singh

Prashant Singh serves as the Chief Operating Officer of LeadSquared. He graduated from IIT Delhi with a degree in Mathematics and Computer Science. Prashant was the COO of Proteans before starting LeadSquared. He looks after the business retention, growth, and expansion of LeadSquared.

Sudhakar Gorti

As the Chief Product Officer, Sudhakar Gorti leads the product design and development of LeadSquared. He graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, with a degree in Electrical Engineering. He is also the co-founder of Proteans. Even before that, he worked in many software development jobs at IBM, Talisma Corporation (now part of Campus Management Corp), and Oracle Software.

Sukhbir Kalsi

Sukhbir Kalsi is the Senior Vice President, of Product Development, who looks after the product engineering team at LeadSquared. Sukhbir previously spearheaded the initiatives in administering and architecting MS Dynamics CRM systems for several medium and big organizations, resulting in excellent user and customer satisfaction. He has a Bachelor of Engineering degree from Karnataka University, Dharwad.

LeadSquared - Mission and Vision

The mission statement of LeadSquared is, "To offer the best sales execution platform for high-velocity sales teams."

LeadSquared - Startup Story

After the acquisition of their first startup company, Protreans by Nilesh Patel, Sudhakar Gorti, and Prashant Singh, they decided to come up with a solution that can solve businesses' sales problems and execute them properly while handling all the challenges. This pushed them to launch their first service in 2011 - MarketXpander.

After successfully serving many clients under the MarketXpander services, the main idea of LeadSquared was born. It started offering customized email marketing campaigns, user-friendly landing pages, and lead management for small and micro businesses.

In 2014, LeadSquared was named an “Exemplar" by NASSCOM. It was around this time that the company decided to widen its sales team by adding features like sales automation for larger teams, an app marketplace, customized reports, APIs, and Webhooks.

LeadSqaured launched its mobile app in 2015 and it reached over 100 customers. It was a hit among B2C businesses for having features like a workday planner, sales notifications, and geo-tracking. Within a year, the company officially launched its Automation Platform.

LeadSquared established its very own developer platform called 'LAPPS' for developers to build customized solutions for their companies. The company continues to empower businesses by creating some self-service portals (admissions application sites, digital applications for financial institutions, and partner connections).

Around 2021, LeadSqaured went global with the help of the International Finance Corporation by expanding its offices in New Jersey, the Philippines, South Africa, Australia, and Indonesia. Recently, the company joined the Unicorn club and launched a series of different solutions, such as the ACE, which is the company's newest sales performance suite.

LeadSquared - Business & Revenue Model

The business model of LeadSquared is a SaaS-based service model for B2B technology companies and B2C businesses. It offers a wide variety of services and products to its paying customers. The main business lies in delivering a vertical-centric and flexible sales tech platform for its customers. The key products or services offered by LeadSquared are:

• Marketing Automation
• Mobile CRM
• Sales Execution CRM
• LeadSquared Apps (LAPPS) for developers
• Customized Integrations
• Customized APIs
• Customer Portals
• Sales Performance Suite

LeadSquared - Revenue Growth

LeadSquared is reported to have a total revenue of Rs 200 crores as of 2022.

Here's what, Nilesh Patel, CEO has to say,

"Our revenue doubled to ₹200 crores in the financial year 2022 from about ₹100 crores in 2020-21. Now we are looking to increase our revenue to about ₹400 crores in the next five years. We have 1,200 employees at present which we will double in the next 18 months."

Financials

Expense Breakdown

LeadSquared total expenses rise from Rs 262 crore in FY22 to Rs 456 crore in FY23.

EBITDA

The business had a difficult fiscal year in FY22–FY23. Due to growing costs (from Rs. 1.36 in FY22 to Rs. 1.78 in FY23), the EBITDA margin decreased, causing a decline in ROCE of -43.06% in FY22 to -22.12% in FY23.

Leadsquared - Products and Services

Ace

The marketing automation platform and software company LeadSquared has introduced Ace in December, 2021, a new suite for sales performance management. The Ace Suite gamifies sales processes and improves sales success by combining analytical and psychological strategies.

LeadSquared - Funding and Investors

LeadSquared has received $187.9 million in investment over four stages. On June 21, 2022, they received a Series C round of investment. It is supported by five investors. The most recent investors are Westbridge Capital and Gaja Capital.

LeadSquared - Awards and Achievements

Below is the list of awards and achievements won by LeadSqaured:

• Financial Times - 1000 High-Growth Companies Asia-Pacific Award (2018)
• LeadSquared was the Top rated CRM Solution by Capterra
• G2 High Performer Enterprise (2021)
• G2 High Performer Asia-Pacific (2021)
• LeadSquared won the Marketing Automation Company of the Year by Frost & Sullivan (2018)
• NASSCOM Presented LeadSqaured as the No.1 Marketing Automation Software in India
• Consistently listed in Deloitte's Fast 50 in 2014, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2019.

LeadSquared - Shareholding

Below are the shareholder details:

• Founder: 38.4%
• Angel: 16.1%
• Enterprise: 15.9%
• Fund: 14.6%
• ESOP: 11.2%
• Other People: 3.8%

LeadSquared - Partners

LeadSquared has partnered with various leading companies like Wipro, Nagarro, Ozonetel, 18.h, Visionet, Areneva, and Dgtl.

Through this partner program, LeadSqaured offers consulting services, integration services, and more.

Niro

A strategic partnership between LeadSquared and Niro  in December, 2021 will provide complete SaaS solutions to companies looking to boost efficiency and optimize their sales operations.

Godrej Housing Finance

Godrej Housing Finance (GHF) and LeadSquared, a cutting-edge lending CRM and marketing automation platform, announced their partnership to increase sales productivity in December 2021.

MentorLab

A strategic partnership between LeadSquared and MentorLab on January 30, 2023 will provide complete SaaS solutions to companies looking to boost efficiency and optimize their sales operations.

LeadSquared - Online and Social Media Presence

LeadSquared knows how to keep its customers engaged with their latest news and updates. The company is very active with its blogs and articles, through which it shares all the information related to marketing automation. It has a dedicated blog page that has some relevant insights on the automation market. It has social media accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter.

LeadSquared - Competitors

The top competitors of LeadSquared are:

1. Zoho CRM
2. CleverTap
3. HubSpot Marketing Hub
4. Freshsales Suite
5. Salesforce Marketing Cloud Account Engagement
6. IMImobile
7. Weave
8. ExactTarget

LeadSquared - Future Plans

LeadSquared plans to target $200 million in revenue in the coming five years. The company has also started expanding its offices globally, as it recently opened its office in New Jersey with over 50 employees working in various roles and functions.

CEO Nilesh Patel says about the company's expansion, "We foresee North America to have the biggest revenue share in the future, which necessitates that we put a strong foot forward and build talent teams in sales and marketing based out of the US. In the future, we will look at building local teams for other business functions as well".

With this, he also said, "With the expansion, the company is targeting USD 200 million in revenue in the next five years. This is in keeping with its vision to expand through partner networks in other geographies, meeting the needs of international markets by delivering new-age, industry-specific solutions."

In the next three to four years, LeadSquared intends to go public, even though the software-as-a-service (SaaS) company anticipates $200 million in revenue during that time, as per news report of September 2022

FAQs

Does LeadSquared provide a CRM?

Yes, LeadSquared provides a CRM tool for Marketing Automation.

Where is LeadSquared based at?

LeadSquared is based in Bengaluru.

Who is the CEO of LeadSquared?

Nilesh Patel is the CEO of LeadSquared.

Is LeadSquared a Unicorn?

Yes, LeadSquared is valued at $1 Billion.