Zeliq, a Paris-based AI sales solution provider, has raised $10 million in seed financing. The round was led by Exor Ventures (backed Forta and Qonta). It was supported by Resonance VC, which also invested at the pre-seed stage.
The latest oversubscribed round brings the total funding raised by the company to $15.4 million just one year after launching.
To meet its goal of establishing itself in the US market, Zeliq will deploy the funds towards scaling in the US and internationally. It aims to make this possible through marketing and product development, and expanding its team of 35.
What challenge does it tackle?
Most businesses are hindered by the inefficiencies and costs associated with using multiple sales tools for prospecting, outreach, team management, and closing a deal. This makes managing the sales cycle needlessly complicated and often overwhelming and reduces the time sales reps can spend on actually selling.
Zeliq startup tackles this major pain point faced by B2B tech companies by hosting the entire sales tool stack in a single platform. This eliminates the need to switch from one tool to another and allows businesses to conduct highly targeted virtual sales.
What does Zeliq do?
Founded by Dorian Ciavarella, Guillaume Cruz, and Victor Lennel in 2023, Zeliq identifies sales prospects, profiles LinkedIn users, and automates sales workflows. It uses AI to analyse personality, and strategy, and generate personalised outreach messages.
It integrates highly accurate contact data from a database of 450+ million potential buyers, the largest of any European sales platform. To date, it has hosted more than 1 million actions on-site per month, making it one of Europe’s fastest-growing startups.
Zeliq’s platform includes features such as automatic data enrichment and sales sequences that combine LinkedIn outreach with follow-up emails. A LinkedIn plug-in and automated email function, which will integrate with the workflow to ensure reminders and follow-ups are never missed, are also available. While Zeliq mainly caters to sales reps, it can serve all revenue-related roles.
In one year of its debut, Zeliq has reached over 2000 users worldwide, including many of tech’s household names, without any marketing expenditure. Currently, 50% of Zeliq’s customers are in France, with 25% in the US, and the remaining 25% distributed worldwide.
Zeliq co-founder and CEO, Dorian Ciavarella, said: “Our ability to secure funding so quickly reflects the confidence investors have in our vision and execution. We’re proud to have raised more money in our seed round and at a much faster pace than our competitors. In fact, we completed our first fundraising in just one month, and our second round followed a similar timeline, all without a traditional roadshow. Exor and Resonance bring a wealth and diversity of experience that will help us expand our product capabilities, scale in the US and beyond, and continue on our growth trajectory.”
Noam Ohana and Michael Lavner from Exor Ventures, said: “Over the last few years we have seen go-to-market bloat shoot up as a result of an overly complex sales stack and an explosion of sales tools available. At Exor Ventures we are convinced that a new wave of AI-enabled solutions – favouring a “sales-in-a-box” approach – is the only way to solve what remains today one of the biggest challenges for companies. We were vastly impressed by Dorian and Guillaume’s drive and fresh take on the market: bringing all sales data and tools under one solution, simplifying the tech stack, and augmenting sales and marketing staff in ways unseen to date.”
What do we think about Zeliq?
Given that Zeliq has raised funding and plans to expand in the US, it is evident that the company plans to help more businesses enjoy the benefits of its platform, which offers virtual sales engagements, driving business growth and efficiency.
