Microsoft’s VC fund leads $22m round of sales conversation startup

Salesken, an AI-driven sales conversation startup, raised US$22 million in a series B round of funding led by Microsoft’s Venture Fund M12. Existing investor Sequoia India also participated in the round.

Salesken co-founder and CEO Surga Thilakan / Photo credit: Salesken

Salesken will use the funds to accelerate its expansion into the North American market and invest further in its proprietary deeptech product.

The startup improves revenue per sales representative for a company by identifying gaps in their sales calls and bridging them with real-time cues.

Co-founders Surga Thilakan and Sreeraman Vaidyanathan spent over 10 years training nearly 20,000 sales representatives and built its product by combining sales coaching with engineering and data science.

“As remote selling has now become more mainstream, we see Salesken reduce onboarding time by two to three months, through live assistance to sales representatives from day zero,” said Thilakan.

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Salesken improves sales conversions for a firm by 15% to 25% within 60 days of the company adopting the product, according to Abhi Kumar, partner at M12.