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The global sales enablement platform market is estimated to grow at 19% CAGR to reach $7.3 billion market by 2028 from $1.7 billion in 2020. Indian Unicorn Mindtickle is helping improve sales team effectiveness by deploying AI, ML, and gamification capabilities into the mix.

Mindtickle’s Offerings

Founded in 2011 by Deepak Diwakar, Krishna Depura, Mohit Garg, and Nishant Mungali, Pune and San Francisco-based Mindtickle provides a sales readiness solution for closing the gaps in both knowledge and skill that are found in customer-facing teams. Nearly a decade ago, the founders had realized that for most goods and services, customers had access to a slew of companies trying to sell them similar offerings. While that bodes well for customers, it did mean that companies needed to put in an extra effort to close sales and retain existing customers. Depura had seen how companies like Facebook and Zynga had developed addictive products and services through gamification strategies. He wanted to leverage some of these learnings into sales efforts. That idea led to the creation of Mindtickle.

Mindtickle’s platform allows sales teams to train, coach, and align their teams to make reps and managers more effective. It collects data points such as common questions, feedback, and details on how much time is spent on a topic to make the sales pitch more effective. By combining on-demand online training, bite-sized mobile updates, gamification, coaching, and role-play with a data-driven approach, it is able to accelerate time-to-productivity, deliver improved sales execution and help boost performance. It uses techniques such as role-playing to help sales teams practice their pitch and address customers’ queries.

Last year, it also announced the availability of Call AI, the first AI and machine learning-enhanced conversation intelligence solution for sales leaders that can help identify gaps and winning behaviors to grow revenue. The capability has been integrated with its coaching capabilities to help revenue leaders make targeted improvements with their sales teams.

Today, Mindtickle has become a leading sales readiness platform that is working with more than a million users across over 220 enterprises including customers such as Johnson & Johnson, Splunk, and Wipro. It had initially started by focusing on mid-size and large enterprises in the tech sector and has now expanded to clients across industries including financial services, pharma, medical devices, and oil and gas. Its products have received several awards and accolades. It was ranked the leading Enterprise Software Product and the 5th ranked sales software product on G2’s Best Software 2020 lists.

Mindtickle has been enhancing its products to address the growing demands of the remote working world. Recently, it launched two new products – the Readiness Index, its sales performance product created to help sales leadership teams collaborate and set Ideal Rep Profiles; and Asset Hub that gives representatives access to a single view into training content in addition to marketing collateral that can be used with prospects.

Mindtickle’s Financials

Mindtickle remains privately held and does not disclose its financials. It was expected to be operating at annual recurring revenues of $25-$30 million in 2020, having grown 170% over the year. In June 2021, it was expected to be operating at an annual recurring revenue run rate of $40 million.

The company has raised $281.3 million in seven rounds of funding led by Qualcomm Ventures, Norwest Venture Partners, Canaan Partners, NearView Capital, SoftBank Vision Fund, New Enterprise Associates, and Accel. Its most recent round was held in August 2021 where it raised $100 million and was valued at $1.2 billion. A round held in November 2020 had valued the company at $500 million.

Mindtickle’s valuation more than doubled in a year. I would like to see more details on its financials to see if they justify this ballooning valuation. The company has the potential to continue to expand into other industries and verticals. By continuing to improve its tech offerings and add analytical capabilities it will also be able to expand well into the market. But, the company is not alone in this space. Several others like Gong, Chorus.ai, Salesloft, Outreach, and many more offer very similar services.

The main issue is that this is a competitive space. It’s a very good company that is showing excellent traction. Probably somewhat overvalued, but that is the sign of the times.