SaaS startup inFeedo raises $700K from Y Combinator, angel investors

inFeedo, a people analytics-focussed software-as-a-service (SaaS) company, has raised $700,000 in a bridge funding round led by global startup accelerator Y Combinator.

Other investors in the round, which the startup dubs a pre-Series A round, include Y Combinator CEO and partner Michael Seibel, Innov8 founder Ritesh Malik, Lenskart chief executive officer Peyush Bansal, former Cloudcherry CEO Vinod Muthukrishnan, former Snapdeal chief product officer Anand Chandrasekaran, former Kwench CEO Sunder Nookala and Inventus Law CEO Anil Advani.

The 100x Entrepreneur Fund, an early-stage venture capital firm, also participated in the round through investment platform LetsVenture, inFeedo said in a statement.

Gurugram-based inFeedo is part of Y Combinator’s Summer 2020 batch, which is being conducted remotely due to the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.

With this round of funding, inFeedo aims to double down on hiring to fill up key management roles from COO, CMO to CTO who can scale the organisation to rapidly expand its customer base and generate more revenues.

The future product roadmap includes enhanced capabilities to engage remote workforces, leadership and manager effectiveness, and ability to run pulse surveys, the statement added.

"In spite of running a cash flow positive business, our main aim to fundraise during the pandemic was to double down in Southeast Asia and build a leadership team that helps customers remotely connect with their employees better and come out of COVID-19 stronger than before," Tanmaya Jain, founder and CEO of inFeedo said.

Early in 2016, inFeedo had raised a seed round from Dheeraj Jain, managing director at UK-based Redcliffe Capital and Anupam Mittal, founder and chief executive of People Group.

inFeedo, founded by Jain in 2013, operates an employee experience chatbot called Amber, which helps human resources departments measure several data points. These include analytics on employee engagement, individual employee and organisational sentiment, attrition prediction and insights on company culture.

This year, the company is looking to expand into the Southeast Asia market and take on competitors such as Glint which was recently acquired by LinkedIn. inFeedo claims to have users in more than 50 countries with over 100 customers including enterprises such as Airtel, GE Healthcare, Nivea, Lenovo, AXA Affin General Insurance, Tata Group, Unilever, Puma and OYO.

"It’s the founder’s persistence and hustle clubbed with the massive growth opportunity in the employee experience market brought on by the shift to remote work that made me invest immediately," Cloudcherry CEO Muthukrishnan said.

"Having benefited directly from Amber at OYO, as a customer, I was already motivated to invest in inFeedo as a company with a strong value system that's always prioritised customer advocacy over investor relations," Innov8 founder Malik said.

Some of the other SaaS startups that raised funding recently include customer engagement software company Freshworks, which raised $85 million from alternative investments firm Steadview Capital, Zomentum, which raised $4.1 million in a seed funding round from Accel and SAIF Partners raised a seed round of funding led by an angel investor Hari Balasubramaniam.