Tech startup CleverTap closes $35 million Series C funding to help businesses increase their customer engagement and drive long-term retention

Companies and business owners will tell you that retaining your customers is as important as attracting new ones. User retention is more than just keeping your mobile app users. It’s about building loyal relationships that drive revenue growth. CleverTap is a tech startup and a provider of customer engagement and retention platform that helps over 8,000 brands increase their customer engagement, drive long-term retention, and maximize user lifetime value.

Yesterday, CleverTap announced it has closed $35 million Series C funding to build out its new US-based engineering hub, add enhanced predictive capabilities to its market-leading platform, and fuel an aggressive global go-to-market expansion strategy.

The investment for CleverTap’s Series C round was led by existing investors Tiger Global Management and Sequoia India. This new funding increases CleverTap’s outside investment to $61 million since the beginning of 2019 — a period that has seen the company’s valuation more than double from $150 million to $385 million.

Founded in 2013 by Anand Jain, Sunil Thomas, and Suresh Kondamudi, CleverTap combines real-time customer insights, an advanced segmentation engine, and powerful engagement tools into one intelligent marketing platform. Every day, thousands of brands use our machine learning models to create differentiated customer engagement strategies that help mobile marketers drive omni-channel growth. CleverTap is used by over 8,000 global brands, including Sony, Vodafone, Carousell, DC Comics, Go-Jek, BookMyShow, and DealsPlus.

“Leading companies know that the key to driving revenue growth in the mobile app space is increasing user retention and raising long-term customer lifetime value,” said Sunil Thomas, co-founder and CEO of CleverTap. “We’re in the unique position to deliver a holistic solution that not only provides actionable customer insights but also delivers the right message to drive deeper engagement based on real-time customer usage—all at scale. This latest round of funding will enable CleverTap to help more companies achieve their retention goals as they build long-lasting relationships with their customers.”

CleverTap’s customer lifecycle and user retention platform leverages machine learning to offer a robust engagement suite that enables brands to convert, engage, retain, and grow their mobile user base. The acclaimed solution has been adopted by some of the world’s leading organizations across multiple industries, and customer growth has surged over 2X over the past year alone with an average of over eight billion user actions processed each day. CleverTap has helped generate over $2B in incremental revenue for its customers, and currently reaches more than one billion devices and over 8,000 consumer apps in more than 100 countries.

“There is a clear lack of viable solutions in the market today that drive the needed business outcomes for mobile conversion, retention, and growth,” said, Mohit Bhatnagar, Managing Director, Sequoia Capital India LLP. “CleverTap is solving a significant pain point for marketers by offering a user retention platform that can exponentially increase customer lifetime value and long-term growth.”

Global expansion and product development will be primary areas of emphasis for the company. Funds will be used to fuel team growth across engineering, sales, and marketing across the US, Latin America, Europe, and Asia, allowing CleverTap to expand on its growing technology leadership position and drive awareness in expanding territories.