Welcome to the latest edition of the SaaS weekly roundup, your one-stop source of everything you need to know in the world of software as a service. Apart from new launches and acquisitions, the funding fervor in the SaaS startups continues unabated.
Table of Contents
News of the week
Global fintech as a service provider Rapyd to acquire Valitor, an Icelandic payments solutions firm
It was just in January this year that fintech-as-a-service provider Rapyd had raised funding. Now it seems that it’s putting that to good use as it has acquired Iceland-based Valitor, a payment solutions firm. While the terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, reports suggest that it’s worth $100million.
Microsoft Teams: Now you can bring in your data from Salesforce too
While Salesforce might have acquired Slack to make the synergy between them better, the CRM pioneer has also rolled out its app for Microsoft Teams. The app was available since October as a preview, and now it’s been released generally. It allows sales teams to have relevant information about consumers and discuss that within Teams.
TCS, a leading IT company from India, has introduced a major update for the Agile tool dubbed Jile. Version 5.0 of the app enables better collaboration and is also customized for the needs or organization at different maturity levels.
Indicate whether you’ll join a meeting virtually or in person on Google Calendar
Google Calendar has introduced a minor change that will really improve the meetings. With hybrid workplaces expected to become the future, the feature will let attendees select whether they’ll be joining the meeting in person, or virtually. Both the organizer and other attendees will be able to see this information.
SaaS companies that got the funding this week
Fidelity, BlackRock lead PineLabs’ $600million funding
PineLabs a leading payments firm in India has closed a $600million funding round as it looks to expand to other Southeast Asia and aims to go public in the next 18 months. The funding was led by Fidelity Management & Research Co. and BlackRock Inc.
Document collaboration software Coda had raised $80million at $600million valuation last year. Within less than a year, its valuation has more than doubled to $1.4billion as it has garnered $100million in funding led by Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan (OTPP).
SaaS-based LoanPro confirms $100million raise
LoanPro provides loan-management services and has nabbed a $100million fund infusion from FTV Capital. Founded in 2014, the company has over 600 clients in the US and Canada, and has provided over $15billion in loans.
A company called Mmhmm just raised $100million
Evernote’s creator Phil Libin had launched Mmhmm last year when the pandemic was at its peak. The Mmhmm software works on top of the video conferencing software like Zoom and Google Meet by offering a virtual camera to offer additional capabilities. These include the ability to speak in front of slides, add pre-recorded messages to live discussions, and more. The startup has now received $100million in funding led by Softbank Vision Funds.
Avataar, Ascent Capital co-lead Series B funding in SaaS firm CRMNext
CRMNext, an experience transformation platform for enterprise banks and financial service providers, has nabbed $16million in funding as part of its Series B round. The funding will be used for expanding to more countries and increase the team size.
Localyze raises $12million for a SaaS that supports cross-border hiring and relocation
With remote working changing the way we work, we’re seeing a lot of new-age SaaS companies raining millions of dollars to make remote hiring and other such things a seamless process. Localyze, a startup backed by Y Combinator, has raised $12million in Series A investment to help staff relocation and hiring from anywhere in the world.
In numbers
$1trillion
That’s the opportunity that Indian SaaS companies can unlock while creating 500,000 new jobs by 2030 as per the “Shaping India’s SaaS Landscape” report from SaaSBOOMi. The image below gives a good snapshot of how far the Indian SaaS ecosystem has come, and SaaSworthy’s article summarizes it succinctly too.
Must reads
Demand Curve: How to double conversions on your startup’s homepage
Everything you need to know about Freemium pricing
Listen to
The “hardcore year” approach to $10k/month in revenue with Andrey Azimov of Sheet2Site
Sheet2Site’s Andrey Azimov shares his journey in this podcast. He talks about working from Bali, why he learned programming, all the projects he worked upon, and why he continued to work on Sheet2Site. Lastly, he shares why he sold it off recently.
Data driven customer success ft. Arundhati Balachandran, Senior Director, Customer Success at Chargebee
Chargebee’s Senior Director of Customer Success, Arundhati Balachandran talks about how he made the switch from sales to customer success, what metrics one should focus on, and more. She also highlights the role the customer success team plays in increasing the Net Retention Rate.
SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin shares 11 simple tips to drive down churn
In this podcast, Jason Lemkin highlights 11 tips that SaaS companies should follow to reduce churn. These are simple tips that many may have skipped such as good customer success practices, setting goals, answer customer tickets quickly, and so on.
Watch
Zero to App: IndieHacking a Jamstack SaaS – Mike Cavaliere
While this video is technical in nature, it gives a good glimpse of how one can go about building a tech stack for a SaaS product. Listen to Mike Cavalier as he shares about building a collaborative photo gallery using Next.js, Prisma, Cloudinary, and other tools.
