Billing automation firm Zenskar raises $3.5 Mn led by Bessemer

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New York and Bengaluru-based billing automation platform Zenskar has raised $3.5 million in a seed funding round led by Bessemer Venture Partners, with participation from Shine Capital, Basecamp Fund and Converge.

The firm plans to utlise the funds towards hiring and upskilling engineering talent, accelerating product development, and advancing its go-to-market initiatives, the company said in the media statement on Tuesday.

Founded in March 2022 by Apurv Bansal and Saurabh Agrawal, Zenskar offers a flexible billing platform that enables SaaS companies to handle complexities in pricing that include usage-based pricing, subscriptions, nuanced discounts, credits, custom currencies, prepaid, post-paid, and ramp deals.

Bansal was formerly managing data products at Google, while Agrawal has to experience building finance-related products. Bansal and Agrawal are second-time entrepreneurs with Zenskar who sold their previous startups to Snapdeal and music-streaming app Gaana.

“Our vision is to provide an integrated suite of financial products that seamlessly automates the entire quote-to-cash cycle, including CPQ, billing, accounting, receivables management, usage metering, analytics, and forecasting,” said Bansal.

Internal engineering resources are freed up from billing efforts. In addition, finance teams can recognise accounting entries very flexibly in a low-code no-code manner based on business and pricing nuances, said cofounder Agrawal.

As global SaaS spending continues to increase, pricing is evolving from vanilla subscriptions to granular, consumption-based pricing. Oftentimes, product launches and pricing changes get delayed because of limitations with billing tools.

Along with solving billing-related limitations, Zenskar also offers services in automating accounting, streamlining receivables management workflows, and providing analytics. Zenskar integrates with the entire stack of a company, including CRM, CPQ and ERP.

“Onboarding can be done by non-technical users, and only takes a few days instead of the months required by legacy billing tools,” the statement said.

The company aims to disrupt the quote-to-cash tooling segment or SaaS companies.  Quote-to-cash segment automates three core applications like configuring price quotes, contract management, and revenue management.

“We are excited to partner with Zenskar on their journey to fundamentally disrupt the quote-to-cash tooling for SaaS companies. We were impressed with their deep understanding of customer pain points, and their DNA of first principles innovation to provide a radically unique and flexible billing software,” said Anant Vidur Puri, partner, Bessemer Venture Partners.