According to Allied Market Research, global SaaS will be worth $700B by 2030, up from an estimated $121B in 2020. Customer success demand has skyrocketed as more emphasis is placed on retention and expansion; customer success jobs are one of the most in-demand jobs on LinkedIn today, and the sector has seen a 600% increase in Chief Customer Officers in the last year.
Velaris, a Customer Success Platform for B2B technology, has raised €4.7M in seed funding, ushering in a new era of true AI-powered Customer Success. Octopus Ventures led the capital raise, which also included VCs, Zaka, and Fintech 365.
Since its inception in May 2021, the company has recently closed a $5M seed round. The round was led by Octopus Ventures and is one of the largest enterprise SaaS seed rounds since April 2022.
Fund utilisation
The funds will be used to develop a Machine Learning-led layer for Velaris‘ platform, allowing B2B tech companies to fully understand their customers, deepen relationships, and retain and expand business with them through data-driven decisions. Velaris will also use this capital to establish R&D, Product, and Go-To-Market teams in London and Madrid, in addition to their existing Sri Lanka hub.
Tech at play
Velaris focuses on user experience to encourage the use of customer experience data, which will ultimately contribute to running a better business. This includes flexible reporting that integrates intelligence with multiple data streams within the dashboard, such as product, revenue, and performance.
Velaris is an all-in-one platform that helps B2B companies put customers at the centre of their operations, founded in 2021 by Jose Fernandez-Castano and Dilanka Kalutota. Velaris focuses on a frictionless user experience to encourage the use of customer experience data, which will ultimately contribute to running a better business. Octopus Ventures and other leading global SaaS entrepreneurs have invested in Velaris.
Dilanka Kalutota, Co-Founder says, “We are incredibly excited to have raised this capital. The seed round will enable us to launch our intelligence layer and gain a unique position within the market to be the first AI-led Customer Success platform. Velaris will serve the entire organisation enabling horizontal growth in other teams and becoming the single source of truth for customer data.”
Co-Founder José Fernández-Castaño comments, “Understanding this economic landscape, Customer Success teams are uniquely positioned to help their companies weather the downturn through retention and expansion of existing revenues. We’re thrilled to now enable CS teams with a truly innovative and game-changing solution. With Octopus Ventures’ belief in Velaris, we’re able to democratise customer experience data and empower CS teams to have a greater impact across the company.”
Conor Scanlan, Investor at Octopus Ventures comments: “Octopus Ventures backs the people and ideas that are changing the world, and Velaris is exactly that. The brilliant people who make up the Velaris team, combined with their hyper focus on user experience and impacting NRR are already making them a leader. The addition of machine-led intelligence will alter the customer success space entirely, not to mention the tech businesses they’re supporting. We were impressed by the team’s ability to build such a powerful product in under a year and are delighted to be a part of this holistic and data-driven step change”.”
Anuj Sharma, Head of Customer Success at Vector.ai says, “Velaris has successfully restructured the way we work and interact with our customers. We previously lacked any smooth integration or real visibility into our customers’ many, many data points, which ultimately meant that our understanding of them wasn’t where it needed to be. Velaris removed previously siloed information, gave us flexibility for tailored reporting on this now easily accessible data and made it uncomplicated to use from the start. We’ve seen the change in performance already and couldn’t be more impressed and happy with the switch we made.”
