Unicorn tech startup Chargebee raises $250 million in funding, more than doubling its valuation to $3.5 billion in just 9 months

The meteoric rise of enterprise software startup Chargebee from a small startup to a unicorn is a testament to many years of hard work and perseverance by the team of this relatively new startup. In April 2021, Chargebee joined the highly coveted unicorn club after raising $125 million, valuing the enterprise software startup at $1.4 billion.

Today, Chargebee announced it raised $250 million in a funding round led by Tiger Global and Sequoia Global. The latest round brings the company’s valuation to $3.5 billion. Chargebee will use the latest cash infusion for product innovation and global expansion, as well as corporate growth initiatives.

The latest round of funding more than doubles the company’s valuation in just nine months and further highlights the potential of Chargebee’s tools and services in helping companies manage their subscription-based models and integrate with payment networks such as Stripe and Paypal.

With subscription businesses expanding worldwide, each recurring revenue business needs more options and flexibility to manage varied billing use-cases. Fast-growing SaaS businesses are now investing in streamlining their revenue operations to identify leakage and capture opportunities across their revenue cycle. Chargebee frees businesses from spaghetti billing and enables them with a powerful subscription infrastructure that lets them scale their business process as they grow.

Yesterday, the San Francisco-based Chargebee announced a fresh round of $125 million in series G funding to become a new member of the highly coveted unicorn club. The round was co-led by new investor Sapphire Ventures and existing investors Tiger Global and Insight Venture Partners, along with participation from another existing investor, Steadview Capital.

Founded in 2011 in the southern Indian city of Chennai by two friends, Krish Subramanian and Rajaraman Santhanam, Chargebee automates revenue operations of high-growth, subscription-based businesses. Its SaaS platform helps businesses manage and grow their revenue by automating subscriptions, billing, invoicing, payments, and revenue recognition processes and it provides key reports, metrics, and insights into their subscription business.

Used by over 6,000 companies in 60 countries using more than 120 currencies, Chargebee first became commercially available in mid-2012. Chargebee has an extensive customer portfolio that includes brands like Okta, Freshworks, Calendly, Study.com, and thousands of other high-growth subscription businesses.

As a core revenue enabler for thousands of subscription businesses, Chargebee’s rapid growth has further been spurred by its fastest time-to-value and its long-term investment in customer growth. Chargebee’s platform is easy to implement; onboarding can be completed in less than ten days – even for large global enterprises.

“There is room for a lot of innovation in the B2C (business to consumer) side. In B2B, subscription is the norm,” Subramanian told news outlet Reuters.

“We believe every company will be a subscription company in the future. The predictability of a subscription business model is extremely attractive,” Sequoia India Managing Director Tejeshwi Sharma said.