Sequoia’s Surge joins $2m funding of sales engagement startup Outplay

Sales engagement platform Outplay said it has raised US$2 million in funding from Sequoia Capital India’s scale-up program Surge.

Founders of several companies also participated in the round, including Khadim Batti, Vara Kumar Namburu, and Vispi Daver from Whatfix, Krish Subramanian and Rajaraman Santhanam from Chargebee, Vinod Muthukrishnan from Cloudcherry, Vijay Rayapati from Minjar, and Cred’s Kunal Shah.

Outplay co-founders Ram Papineni (left) and Laxman Papineni / Photo credit: Outplay

Founded in January 2020, Outplay helps sales teams plan, execute, track, measure, and optimize interactions between companies and their prospects across different channels on its platform.

With the new fund, it plans to further develop its platform and expand its market. The company claims it has acquired over 300 customers in less than 12 months.

Sales teams are fundamental to the success of businesses, but they remain “entrenched” in customer relationship management (CRM), said Outplay. “Sales reps are less effective and efficient when they use just a CRM [tool] or multiple tools to get their job done,” said the company’s CEO and co-founder Laxman Papineni.

The firm aims to improve sales processes by automating tasks through a single interface with data-driven analytics to help salespeople achieve their targets.

It goes up against rivals in the space such as Outreach, which raised US$50 million in a Series F round in June 2020, as well as SalesLoft, which is valued at US$1.1 billion after it closed US$100 million in a funding round led by Owl Rock Capital in January this year.

Correction (March 3, 3:20 pm): This article had earlier incorrectly mentioned that Freshworks was one of Outplay’s rivals.