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In order to help companies with subscription management and recurring billing, India-based Chargebee provides Saas solutions for over 3000 high-growth subscription-based businesses. Back in 2019, when the company had raised $14M (approx €11.8M) in its Series D round funding, the company expanded its operations to Europe and announced the opening of its European headquarters in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

Raises Series G

In a recent development, Chargebee has raised $125M (approx €103.9M) in its Series G round of funding. The round was co-led by new investor Sapphire Ventures and existing investors Tiger Global and Insight Venture Partners. The round also saw participation from another existing investor, Steadview Capital.

According to the company, it has raised a total of $230M in funding, to date. The company is now valued at $1.4B, a valuation that has tripled in less than 6 months.

How was Chargebee born?

The company was founded by four friends – Krish Subramanian (CEO), Rajaraman Santhanam (COO), KP Saravsanan (CTO), and Thiyagarajan T. Their goal was to simply build an organisation that truly put people and customers first. Each of them had individually worked on SaaS-based products and realised a common pain point – they (businesses) had to reinvent the core revenue infrastructure each time.

While the subscription model was still just growing, by 2011, the team realised that they had stumbled upon a massive blue-ocean problem. And that’s when they decided to launch Chargebee. The platform automates revenue operations of high-growth, subscription-based businesses.

Its platform helps SaaS, eCommerce, and subscription-based businesses manage and grow their revenue by automating subscriptions, billing, invoicing, payments, and revenue recognition processes. It also provides key reports, metrics, and insights into their subscription business.

Chargebee has an extensive customer portfolio that includes brands like Okta, Freshworks, Calendly, Study.com, among thousands of other high-growth subscription businesses.

Funds for expansion

Krish Subramanian, co-founder & CEO at Chargebee, believes, “Businesses today need to quickly respond to evolving customer needs, compliance requirements, and market pressures in real-time. More than ever before, businesses need their subscription revenue platform to be the reliable system of record that enables them to rapidly scale their revenue processes.”

“Chargebee is committed to spearheading this movement towards a subscription-first world by helping our customers realise rapid value, and being an integral partner in their long-term growth journey.”

The company provides services in the sectors including SaaS, D2C Ecommerce, OTT Streaming, e-learning, publishing, and others, in over 60 countries. With such demand, this raised capital will further be invested in their product to help businesses scale their subscription revenue operations seamlessly – be it a startup or an IPO.

The company also announced that it will be increasing its investment on its global expansion, and key partnerships. 

In an exclusive interview with Silicon Canals, the Subramanian says, “We will be investing a significant portion of our funds towards product and team expansion in Europe, as well as servicing our customers in the UK, Netherlands, France, Germany, Italy, and the rest of Europe.”

Expansion plans for Europe

In the interview, Subramanian tells SC that its business in Europe accounts for about 40-45 per cent of its customer base as Europe has one of the fastest growth rates for saas and subscription businesses. 

The company says it has invested in a data center in Europe to ensure data privacy & controls for its customers in the continent. “We are integrated and are continuing to build deep solutions for all major payment modes in Europe, including SEPA, iDEAL, etc. We will continue to build local language, and compliance in addition to EU VAT, Brexit, local e-invoicing norms, etc.”

The company is already hiring in sales, product, engineering, design, marketing, customer success, and recruitment roles – both from its European headquarters in Amsterdam, and remote in the UK, France, Germany, Spain, etc. Also, Subramanian has recently moved base to Amsterdam to overlook the operations himself.

Some of its noteworthy customers in Europe are SendinBlue, Hopin, Zenchef, Doodle, and Teamleader, among others.

Market overview

The fastest time-to-value and long-term investment in customer growth, has resulted in Chargebee’s rapid growth. Its platform offers complete onboarding in less than ten days – even for large global enterprises.

With the Coronavirus pandemic, the shift to SaaS and subscription-based business models from cars to even coffee providers has seen a huge demand. And, this demand for moving into a recurring revenue stream is expected to grow at a 17.5 per cent CAGR over the next 5 years.

Adam Tesan, Chief Revenue Officer at Chargebee, says, “The SaaS subscription-model offers unprecedented growth potential for both traditional and modern businesses to deliver recurring value to their customers. Our mission at Chargebee is to enable all of these businesses, from startups to enterprise, to realise and rapidly scale this opportunity.”

Champions of Change

Chargebee also has a flagship summit – Champions of Change. The virtual summit is doubling in size since the previous event in October 2020, with participation from over 6000 business leaders. Scheduled to take place on May 19th and 20th, the Champions of Change summit brings together leaders and rising change-makers in the subscription space to a common platform.