Lightspeed-backed ThoughtSpot raises $248 mn at $1.95 bn valuation

Palo Alto and Bengaluru-based artificial intelligence (AI)-driven data analytics firm ThoughtSpot has raised $248 million in a fresh round of funding from new and existing investors.

The latest round put the firm’s valuation at $1.95 billion. Existing backers  Lightspeed Venture Partners, Sapphire Ventures and Geodesic Capital participated in the round. 

US-based tech-focussed investor Silver Lake Waterman participated as a new investor, the seven-year-old tech firm said in a statement. 

The company had attained the unicorn status when it raised $145 million in its Series D round early last year. The new round of funding takes the total funds raised by the company to $554 million.

ThoughtSpot will use the funds to expand research and development efforts, ramping up hiring in its engineering and product verticals, besides investing in customer and thought leadership events, the statement said.

“The world is changing fast, and businesses that change faster will thrive. As technology partners to our customers, we have only one job: provide the agility that’s like oxygen to these organizations so they can compete and win,” Sudheesh Nair, CEO, ThoughtSpot said. 

While the media release did not give details about the lead investor, The Economic Times, which cited the company’s co-founder Ajeet Singh, reported that Lightspeed led the round.

ThoughtSpot

ThoughtSpot was founded in 2012 by Indian-origin entrepreneurs Ajeet Singh, Abhishek Rai, Priyendra Deshwai, Amit Prakash, Shashank Gupta, Sanjay Agrawal and Vijay Ganesan. 

The founders have previously worked at consumer technology companies like Google, Amazon and Facebook. Singh, an Indian Institute of Technology-Kanpur and Indian Institute of Management-Calcutta alumnus, had worked in Bengaluru till 2006. He then moved to the US with his then-employer Honeywell and later worked at Oracle. 

The company claims to become the Google of enterprise search. It provides a technology-based solution that enables sophisticated searches across billions of rows of corporate data and helps derive insights by leveraging AI technology. The product’s natural language search also allows users to interact better with the data generated after analysis.

The company’s India presence includes a strategic R&D centre to build its AI and machine learning-based analytics platform. In April this year, Nair told TechCircle that it will spend $25 million on its India engineering headcount to take it to 150 from 100 in the next 12 months.

Nair had also added that the India research and development office would soon surpass the US offices as the most important centre.

The firm has also launched its India sales and marketing office, headed by Sunil Mahale, vice-president,  Asia-Pacific and Japan.