German startup Ciara launches with seven-figure investment to provide virtual assistant for inside sales reps

Ciara, the Munich, Germany based virtual assistant startup, today announced its public launch a seven-figure investment. Backers include lead investor UVC Partners, Interhyp founders Marcus Wolsdorf and Rober Haselsteiner, as well as the successful entrepreneurs Christian Mangstl (Scout 24) and Felix Haas (Bits & Pretzels, IDnow).

Similar to the assistants in the consumer market such as Amazon Alexa or Google Home, Ciara helps sales representatives effectively conduct phone conversations without struggling to find the right answers or lose the thread. Ciara is a virtual assistant for inside sales professionals and teams. With Ciara, sales agents can create custom and interactive sales guides, manage playbooks, and structure their sales phone calls. Its objection handling feature helps sales agents answer difficult customer questions, e.g. on competition, pricing, and new product capabilities. Standard integrations to the leading CRM systems make it easy to store customer information gained in Ciara-led phone conversations centrally.

Ciara was founded by serial software entrepreneurs Martin Heibel (IntraWorlds) and Konstantin Krauss (Propertybase). The startup helps sales representatives effectively conduct phone conversations without struggling to find the right answers or lose the thread. Ciara already supports more than a dozen companies worldwide in building a consistent and efficient inside sales process and to train new employees quickly.

A growing number of companies are investing in their inside sales teams. Firms now sell their products over the phone or on the Internet, instead of meeting with their customers face-to-face. Inside sales telephone calls are therefore of particular importance: The first moments of customer contact determine the success or failure in sales. Ciara provides inside sales teams with interactive guides, proven playbooks, and smart objection handling, helping them to structure their phone conversations and increase success and productivity.

“We are convinced that productivity assistants are a radically new category of business software. Such assistants are all about making life for people in daily business situations much easier again. Instead of having to deal with dozens of tools, our customers want meaningfully automated solutions. With the Ciara inside sales assistant, we show how that’s possible: With real-time supported phone conversations, Ciara helps employees and teams achieve a new
level of productivity,” says Martin Heibel, managing director of Ciara.

The founders were able to convince several well-known investors to support the future growth of Ciara. A seven-digit investment went into the company at the beginning of the year. “With UVC Partners, the Interhyp founders, Christian Mangstl and Felix Haas we won a unique investor consortium made of software, technology, and sales experts. After just a few months of cooperation, we are benefiting immensely from the knowledge and networks of our investors,“ comments Konstantin Krauss, co-founder of Ciara, on the partnership.

“From my own experience, I know the great growth opportunities of phone-based sales,” says Marcus Wolsdorf, founder of Interhyp AG, Germany’s largest mortgage lender, which he led to the stock exchange in 2005. “The Ciara assistant makes it much easier to train inside sales personnel quickly and effectively, sharing best practice knowledge and supporting every single phone call.”