MUMBAI
:
US-based customer engagement platform MoEngage is in talks to raise $150-180 million from new and existing investors and has appointed Avendus to help with the mandate, two people familiar with the matter told Mint.
“The round, which will value the company at $800-850 million, is a mix of primary and secondary transactions,” one of two people cited above said.
MoEngage and Avendus did not immediately respond to Mint’s requests for a comment.
In 2022, the company raised $77 million in a Series E funding round led by Goldman Sachs Asset Management and B Capital at a valuation of $700 million, as per data from market intelligence provider Tracxn.
Other existing investors including Steadview Capital, Multiples Alternate Asset Management, Eight Roads Ventures, and Matrix Partners India also participated in the funding round. To date, the company has raised over $181 million across 9 rounds.
Global growth push
Moengage outlined plans to use the funds towards deepening its presence in US, Europe, Asia, and Middle East markets and also expand into newer markets such as Latin America and Australia. A part of the funds was also dedicated towards exploring strategic acquisitions to extend its capabilities, MoEngage said at the time.
Broadly, greater access to domestic capital and rising ease of doing business are prompting many new software-as-a-service (SaaS) startups to house their operations in India.
MoEngage, which is reportedly looking to reverse flip its domicile to India, according to Moneycontrol, joins a growing list of other startups such as PhonePe, Razorpay, PineLabs, and Groww that have explored similar moves.
Some of the company’s earlier investors may also exit their stake in part or full as Goldman Sachs looks to pump $35-50 million via a secondary transaction, according to a report by Economic Times last year.
To be clear, shareholders in a secondary transaction sell their stakes to other existing or new investors, and no new capital is injected into the company. Secondary transactions generally take place at a discount to the primary shares.
Also read: Mint Explainer: Why Razorpay and Cashfree are ditching Juspay, and what it means for the fintech sector
Founded by Yashwanth Kumar and Raviteja Dodda in 2014, MoEngage began with the intention of building a customer engagement platform that is backed by a comprehensive artificial intelligence engine. The company has a presence in about 13 countries and claims to have served more than 1200 brands including Ola, ShareChat, Bigbasket, Flipkart and Vedantu, according to its official website.
MoEngage competes with other startups such as Clevertap and Capillary in India.
In October, Avendus highlighted that the global SaaS market size stands at $275 billion with ~45% of the contribution coming from the US and ~5% from India. The investment bank estimated that the Indian SaaS market is estimated to grow at ~33% CAGR over the next 4 years, with a growing number of companies emerging across various verticals and horizontals.
While a few have recently gone public, such as RateGain, Zaggle, and Unicommerce, many private players, including Zoho, Amagi, Shiprocket, Whatfix, Perfios, Darwinbox, Juspay, MoEngage, and Capillary Technologies, are showing promising trends, Avendus said in the report.
Also read: KKR, Partners Group to lead Darwinbox funding round
