Intent-powered Sales Intelligence vendor Slintel closed on a $20 million round A led by GGV, with participation from Accel, Sequoia, and Stellaris. The Bengaluru-based company is looking to expand its presence in the US market and strengthen its product. Slintel, with 100 employees, plans to double its headcount by the end of the year.
The company still has cash from its $4.2 million November seed round but felt it prudent to proceed with an A round earlier than planned.
“We had enough cash in the bank, but investors came to us, and we got a pretty good valuation compared to the previous round, so we decided to take it and use that money to go faster,” said CEO Deepak Anchala.
Revenue grew 5X last year and was on pace to grow 3X before the Series A. Anchala contends that the growth rate will accelerate with the additional capital. “With the funding, we’re actually looking at much bigger numbers. We’re looking at 5x in our revenue this year and also trying for 4x revenue next year.”
“Slintel has one of the best go-to-market engines that we’ve seen in any startup, and the consistency with which the team has been able to deliver on their growth targets is commendable. We’re looking at a company that’s changing the marketing and sales intelligence sphere as we know it, and we couldn’t be happier to be a part of their board,” said Prayank Swaroop, Partner at Accel.
Anchala told TechCrunch that since the round closed six weeks ago, the firm increased its investment in product and marketing. The advertising budget was increased, with the firm looking to generate prospects via SEO, free tools on the company website, and events.
“The next big wave in the enterprise space is (the) use of AI to rethink processes, and all AI at its core requires data. I am, therefore, bullish on the entire data stack, including data which is either proprietary or inferred data that is not easy to replicate. Slintel is in the second category. Their ability to predict strong prospects is a relatively unique capability, and it is very easy to sell due to a direct correlation to (the) top line for their customers.”
Alok Goyal, Partner at Stellaris Venture Partners
The Slintel platform delivers technographic and company insights, buying propensity scores, contacts, and lead enrichment. Slintel identifies thematic intent signals (i.e., sales triggers) such as upcoming contract renewals, companies that show signs of buying their products online, or companies that use their competitors’ products. Slintel captures hard to detect signals from the web, combines this with other third-party intent signals from its partners, and surfaces these insights via integrations with Salesforce, Pipedrive, HubSpot, Slack and Chrome.
“Our customers no longer waste precious time and effort reaching out to and targeting the wrong prospects,” blogged Anchala. “They are able to accurately determine who their high-intent buyers are, whether a target account is already using their competitor’s product / service, when the renewal date for a prospect’s current solution is coming up, or the budget restrictions that they have. All this and more, even before scheduling a discovery call with them.”
Slintel “mines buyer insights,” said Anchala. “We understand where the buyers are in their journey, what their pain points are, what products they use, what they need, and when they need it. So we understand all of this to create a 360-degree view of the buyer that you provide these insights to sales and marketing teams to help them sell better.”
Technology intent is based upon digital footprint tracking that analyzes when new technologies have been adopted or dropped. Technographics span 25,000 technologies across fifteen million companies and are updated weekly. AI models project when contracts come up for renewal, which technologies are likely to be purchased next, and when they will move forward with the purchase.
Thematic intent is based on keyword analysis that suggests company pain points. Slintel “analyzes how many times companies have been talking about a certain keyword [and] how frequently and recently they have been emitting this pain point.”
Propensity-to-buy scores are derived from over twenty-five variables, including contract renewal dates, technology adoption/churn, keyword Intent, budgetary spending, and hiring trends.
“We have taken a contrarian approach by focusing on the buyer funnel, which is an inverse of the sales funnel,” said Anchala. “We analyze buyer journeys and buying patterns of companies to capture early signals of buyer intent.”
“While most other data intelligence platforms provide insights based on search patterns, Slintel’s proprietary algorithm provides prospect recommendations based on technographics-powered buying intent,” states the firm. “Using Slintel, you can predict who’s about to purchase your product and market or sell your product to prospects even before they move on to the research phase of their buying journey.”
Slintel has employees across ten cities in India and the US, with plans to remain a remote-first organization.
Slintel also announced that Hans Tung, Managing Partner at GGV Capital, joined their Board of Directors.
“With the global pandemic completely changing the way companies operate, B2B transactions have gone more digital than ever before,” stated Tung. “Inside sales teams are closing high-value, multi-million-dollar deals while working remotely, and products like Slintel are enabling companies to do this by helping them reimagine their entire sales process for today’s environment.”