MoEngage, a buyer engagement platform that works with shopper manufacturers throughout 75 international locations, says it has raised new funding led by its current investor, Goldman Sachs Alternate options, to ramp up world progress and infuse extra AI into its platform.

All advised, $100 million in shares simply traded arms, cut up roughly 60% main and 40% secondary, as a part of MoEngage’s Sequence F spherical. The funding marks the entry of Indian enterprise agency A91 Companions as a brand new investor co-leading the spherical with Goldman Sachs Alternate options. In response to MoEngage, it has now raised $250 million in funding altogether.

As shopper manufacturers more and more depend on digital channels to achieve prospects, competitors for consideration has intensified. That’s pushed firms to make use of the shopper information they already should ship extra customized advertising. Whereas established advertising platforms proceed to serve this area, manufacturers are actually searching for AI-driven instruments that may automate decision-making and scale back handbook labor. MoEngage positions itself on this section with its Merlin AI suite, which helps advertising and product groups launch campaigns quicker and enhance concentrating on effectivity.

“We assist B2C manufacturers interact extra successfully with their prospects by leveraging the first-party information they have already got,” Raviteja Dodda (pictured above), co-founder and CEO of MoEngage, stated in an interview.

The 11-year-old startup spent its first seven years focusing largely on India and Southeast Asia. Over the previous 4 years, it has expanded its attain to new markets, significantly North America, which now contributes greater than 30% of its income, Dodda advised TechCrunch. About 25% of the enterprise comes from Europe and the Center East, and the remaining 45% from India and Southeast Asia.

Goldman Sachs’ backing within the newest funding will assist additional bolster MoEngage’s world presence. The funding financial institution additionally co-led the startup’s Series E round of $77 million together with B Capital in June 2022.

“The present buyers know probably the most in regards to the firm, by way of how the corporate performs, they usually know the whole lot good and dangerous,” stated Dodda. “[Goldman Sachs] main the spherical is a powerful validation of our fundamentals.”

Over the previous two to 3 years, MoEngage has invested closely in generative AI and decisioning AI capabilities. These efforts are mirrored in its Merlin AI suite, which Dodda stated features a vary of AI brokers constructed for advertising use circumstances.

A few of these brokers act like copywriters, serving to shopper manufacturers draft advertising messages, create a number of variants of a marketing campaign, or generate textual content in pure language together with related photographs. The suite additionally consists of decisioning AI instruments that assist manufacturers decide which prospects ought to obtain a specific message or supply, on which channel, and at what time, Dodda stated.

MoEngage at the moment serves over 1,350 shopper manufacturers worldwide, together with SoundCloud, McAfee, Kayak, Domino’s, Deutsche Telekom, and Travelodge, in addition to distinguished Indian family names resembling Swiggy, Flipkart, Ola, Airtel, and Tata. About 60% of the corporate’s enterprise comes from conventional enterprises, whereas the remaining 40% is from internet-focused companies. The platform additionally works with greater than 25 world banks and several other massive insurers, together with JPMorgan Chase, Citibank, and India’s largest insurer, Life Insurance coverage Company (LIC).

A few of these manufacturers beforehand used advertising platforms from incumbents resembling Adobe, Oracle, and Salesforce. MoEngage has since gained over greater than 300 of them, serving to drive progress in North America and the EMEA areas.

In a single occasion, SoundCloud migrated over 120 million customers to MoEngage inside 12 weeks, using AI-driven insights to speed up product launches and improve retention amongst its paid customers, stated Hope Barrett, senior director of martech at SoundCloud.

A number of of MoEngage’s prospects additionally relied on a number of level options to deal with particular duties. The corporate helped consolidate these instruments right into a unified platform to chop prices and streamline advertising operations.

“In the event you have a look at all of our manufacturers, whether or not it’s a financial institution or an e-commerce firm, they leverage MoEngage to unify all their buyer information from all of the touchpoints. It might be their offline shops, web site, cellular app [or other channels],” Dodda advised TechCrunch.

With out disclosing actual figures, Dodda stated MoEngage grew about 40% year-over-year final 12 months and goals to keep up a 35% compound annual progress fee (CAGR) over the subsequent three years. The corporate additionally expects to turn out to be adjusted EBITDA-positive on a quarterly foundation by the top of the present fiscal 12 months.

MoEngage sees firms resembling Braze and CleverTap, in addition to legacy advertising clouds by Adobe, Oracle, and Salesforce, amongst its key rivals.

The startup has about 800 workers throughout its 15 places of work worldwide. It plans to develop its workforce, significantly in North America and Europe, by scaling its buyer success, help, gross sales, and advertising groups to deepen its presence in these markets. MoEngage additionally intends to construct further AI capabilities and rent extra expertise to help that effort.

MoEngage plans to turn out to be IPO-ready inside the subsequent couple of years, Dodda advised TechCrunch, with out sharing a selected timeline for going public.

“We see a possibility to construct a multi-billion greenback income firm in our area,” he acknowledged.