US-based PE firm HKW writes $20 mn cheque to SaaS startup Draup

By Anuj Suvarna

  • 21 Mar 2022
Credit: 123RF.com

Software-as-a-service (SaaS) firm Draup on Monday said it has raised Series A funding of $20 million (around Rs 152 crore) led by US-based private equity firm HKW.

The fresh funds will be used to boost product development, customer experience and develop new use cases, the firm said in a statement.   

Draup claimed that in the last three years it has witnessed a 30-fold growth in enterprise value, driven by its 98% customer retention, 14 times increase in the number of companies analyzed, 21 times increase in the number of job roles screened.   

Founded by Vijay Swaminathan and Vamsee Tirukkala, Draup provides software focused on enterprise sales teams to micro-target prospects. It also offers software focused on human resource and talent management teams to plan, hire and skill the workforce. 

Both earlier co-founded Zinnov, a global management consulting firm, and Talent Neuron, a web-based talent platform that was acquired by US-based member advisory company CEB. 

“Draup is a system of record for our customer’s HR and talent acquisition teams, helping in human capital planning across their organizations with insightful talent-trend analysis,” Amaresh Ramaswamy, Chief Operating Officer of Draup said. 

“Our customer-first thinking has us continuously improving our product across the two use cases (sales and talent) to provide insights that empower our customers to drive specific, context-rich outcomes. Draup’s retention rate of 98% is unheard of in the industry. When you contrast this with the fact that we have acquired most of our customers so far based on word-of-mouth,” said Vamsee Tirukkala, Chief Customer Officer and Co-Founder of Draup.   

HKW is a middle-market private equity firm focused on investing in companies in the US and Canada. The platform invests primarily in companies around business services, health and wellness, and technology sectors. It last raised $365 million for its fifth fund in 2019.