Business-to-business (B2B) sales productivity start-up Nektar.ai has raised $6 million in seed funding, led by B Capital Group, 3One4, and Nexus Venture Partners.
The round also included participation from angel investors Amit Midha (President of Asia Pacific and Japan at Dell), Ritesh Agarwal (Founder & CEO at OYO Hotels), Kevin Merritt (Ex-President Data & Insights at Tyler Technologies), Evan Davidson (VP of the Asia Pacific and Japan at SentinelOne), Deep Nishar (Senior Managing Partner at Softbank), Tom Donlea (VP & GM APAC at EKATA), and others.
With this, the total seed amount raised by Nektar.ai comes at $8.1 million, marking one of the biggest seed rounds for SaaS firms in Asia, and follows the $2.15 million the start-up had raised last November from Nexus Venture Partners. According to Nektar.ai, the proceeds from the funding will be used to accelerate product development and hire talent for its core team across product, engineering, and go-to-market functions.
The remote-first Nektar.ai was founded last year by Abhijeet Vijayvergiya and Aravind Ravi Sulekha, and claims to be working with ‘hundreds’ of clients. The company provides a connected sales platforms, wherein leads from across the board — including from social media sources — can be collectively clubbed and handled. Sales teams can then collectively work on those leads and share immediate feedback on the platform for other members to see and act.
Additional features that the platform provides, includes an AI-powered predictive engine, that helps teams identify which leads are critical and near-close and which ones are passive.
According to Vijayvergiya, the previous year transformed the world of B2B sales and fundamentally changed the way B2B selling and buying gets done. “Modern, fast-growing distributed teams work in data silos and operate many disconnected sales & marketing tools. This leads to problems like poor visibility into the revenue data, accountability gaps across revenue function, inconsistent playbook adoption, and lack of collaboration within revenue teams, making it harder to create a repeatable sales process and a predictable revenue engine. We want to enable growing SaaS sales teams to execute a scalable revenue engine and unlock their growth flywheel faster.”
Nektar.ai is designed for SaaS revenue teams and is known to capture buyer/seller data from multiple sources like Email, Calendar, Web Conference, and communication tools like Slack, CRM, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp to provide timely insights on leading indicators and surface them into workflow tools for seamless collaboration across customer-facing revenue teams. The firm accelerated product development since they witnessed a strong demand for a guided selling solution in the market, onboarding more than 200 prospects from its waitlist.
“Nektar.ai’s solutions provide great value to distributed revenue teams, which is even more important as enterprises conduct further business across global markets,” said Gabe Greenbaum, General Partner of B Capital Group. “B Capital is always eager to work with experienced and knowledgeable founders, and we’re confident that Abhijeet, Aravind, and the Nektar.ai team will continue their strong momentum on the path to becoming the industry-leading tool for enterprise sales productivity.”
