Velaris takes off with €4.7 million to roll out AI-driven customer success platform

According to Allied Market Research, by 2030, global SaaS is expected to grow at a CAGR of 18.8% and be worth ~$700B, up from the estimated $121B in 2020. Not by coincidence, customer success demand has also skyrocketed as increasing emphasis is placed on retention and expansion. Customer success jobs are one of the top in-demand jobs on LinkedIn today, while the sector has seen a 600% growth of chief customer officers in the last 12 months. 

And yet, there is a distinct market gap for a CRM to leverage the latest technologies to specifically target and adequately support modern customer success teams.

Addressing the challenge, London-based customer success platform for B2B tech, Velaris has raised €4.7 million in a seed round to drive AI-powered customer success. The investment was led by Octopus Ventures and backed by VCs, Zaka and Fintech 365.

The fresh capital will be used to build a Machine Learning-led layer to Velaris’ platform enabling B2B tech companies to wholly understand their customers, deepen the relationship, and retain and expand their business with them through data-driven decisions. The startup will also develop R&D and further boost further expansion in London, Madrid and Sri Lanka.

Founded in 2021, the platform helps B2B companies put customers at the centre of their operations. Velaris concentrates on a frictionless UX to encourage the use of customer experience data that will ultimately contribute to running a better company.

As data continues to grow exponentially, the innovative single-pane solution will combat the challenge alongside other key issues for B2B tech businesses: siloed customer data in the nine-or-so internal tools used to manage a customer’s different touch points, a lack of intelligence to impact Net Revenue Retention (NRR) and advanced reporting and execution capabilities for customer success teams.

Dilanka Kalutota, co-founder said: “The seed round will enable us to launch our intelligence layer and gain a unique position within the market to be an AI-led customer success platform. Velaris will serve the entire organisation enabling horizontal growth in other teams and becoming the single source of truth for customer data.”

Co-founder José Fernández-Castaño added: “Understanding this economic landscape, customer success teams are uniquely positioned to help their companies weather the downturn through retention and expansion of existing revenues. We’re thrilled to now enable CS teams with a truly innovative and game-changing solution.”

Conor Scanlan, investor at Octopus Ventures added: “The addition of machine-led intelligence will alter the customer success space entirely, not to mention the tech businesses they’re supporting.”