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Persana AI secures USD $2.3 million for sales platform

Fri, 1st Nov 2024

Persana AI has announced a seed funding round of USD $2.3 million aimed at enhancing its AI-powered platform for sales teams.

Co-founded by LinkedIn alumni, Rush Shahani and Sriya Maram, Persana AI seeks to address the significant amount of manual work sales teams are compelled to undertake, reportedly occupying 80% of their time. Their platform is designed to streamline workflows and enable growth through data-driven strategies.

The funding, backed by notable investors including Y Combinator and Race Capital, along with industry figures like HubSpot's CTO Dharmesh Shah, will support Persana AI in expanding its capabilities. The sales intelligence market is predicted to expand from USD $4 billion in 2024 to more than USD $10 billion by 2032, highlighting a growing demand for advanced technological solutions in prospecting and revenue growth.

Persana AI features autonomous agents powered by a data orchestration layer, offering capabilities such as precise qualification, tailored personalisation, and strategic engagement. The platform integrates real-time data from over 75 sources, providing users with a comprehensive understanding of each prospect. New data sources are frequently added, enhancing the tool's effectiveness.

The company's platform claims to provide a significant enhancement to sales processes, including a 10-fold increase in efficiency and a 65% reduction in sales cycle duration, thus contributing to substantial pipeline revenue. Deb, Co-founder at Quest Labs, noted, "Persana did in three minutes what used to take my team three weeks."

Rush Shahani and Sriya Maram bring extensive experience to Persana AI from their previous roles at LinkedIn, Shopify, Stripe, and ElementAI. They aim to tackle the inefficiencies in current GTM processes through automation and data insights. "Our vision for Persana AI is to create the ultimate prospecting super app, merging advanced data consolidation with intelligent automation," said Shahani. He emphasised the strategic advantage Persana AI provides by saving over 20 hours a week for teams and increasing conversion rates.

Sriya Maram outlined their long-term ambition: "Our long-term vision is for Persana AI to become the central GTM platform for managing the entire customer journey, from prospecting through post-sale engagement. Agents are only as good as the data they access and we at Persana are working to build the best agents powered by our expansive data foundation." By advancing their AI and ML infrastructure, they hope to facilitate GTM teams in scaling efficiently.

The company's future developments include new task-specific autonomous agents, such as the Quantum Agent for real-time data gathering and predictive agents to identify and prioritise prospects. "Rush Shahani and Sriya Maram effectively built technologies that scaled to billions at LinkedIn, solving complex data challenges with advanced AI and search capabilities, and at Race Capital, we are thrilled to partner with them to deliver this solution to the broader industry," said Edith Yeung, General Partner at Race Capital.

With this recent funding, Persana AI aims to further develop these advanced functionalities, seeking to redefine the effectiveness of prospecting solutions in the sales intelligence sector.

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