Jiminny nabs $16.5 million to analyse AI-driven sales conversations with customers

With more sales teams looking to utilise tools suited to hybrid working, scale up operations and professionalise sales team coaching, demand for conversation intelligence solutions has witnessed a spurt over the last few years. Senior business leaders are also looking to use technology to upskill current sales teams against the backdrop of challenging job markets and narrowing budgets.

Betting big on the trend, UK-headquartered conversation intelligence provider supporting sales teams worldwide Jiminny has raised $16.5 million in funding. The Series A round was led by London and San Francisco-based growth equity firm Kennet Partners. The infused capital will accelerate the company’s expansion in international markets, and boost innovation in the nascent conversation intelligence market with a special focus on developing solutions to analyse emotion in the video, automated scoring of call interactions and real-time insights generated from live transcriptions to drive visibility of performance. The company had raised $2 million in a seed funding round in 2018.

Named after Pinocchio’s conscience – Jiminy Cricket, the platform’s ‘conversational intelligence’ software uses AI to transcribe and analyse sales conversations with customers. It then provides coaching to the salesperson, which can be used to drive more sales.

With clients like Just Eat, Pleo, Cision and Reward Gateway, the company also provides customer profiles, sales forecasts and deal overviews.

Tom Lavery, CEO and founder, Jiminny said: “The funding will further propel Jiminny’s growth and enable us to keep supporting and serving our customers to the high standards we set. The pandemic saw a big uptick of interest in solutions that draw insights and analytics from customer conversations to enhance the productivity and internal cultures of hybrid sales teams. Our platform gives the whole revenue team visibility of performance like never before and helps them to collaborate and coach to drive tangible improvements across the team.”

Hillel Zidel, managing director of Kennet Partners added: “Conversational intelligence is a long term growth industry and Jiminny’s value proposition is unique and potentially transformational. The company is a great example of the kind of founder-led, customer-centric, capital efficient business that we love to invest in.”