Sequoia-backed Hippo Video raises $8 million in funding round
- ByStartupStory | February 17, 2023
Hippo Video, a SaaS platform that offers video-based services, has secured $8 million in a strategic funding round led by Dallas Venture Capital (DVC). The funding round saw contributions from other prominent investors, including KAE Capital, Exfinity Venture Partners, and Alpha Wave Incubation.
Hippo Video intends to utilize the $8 million raised in the recent funding round to finance its expansion in the US market and diversify its customer use cases. Additionally, the funds will be allocated to scaling up the company’s product portfolio and improving its product features.
Hippo Video was established in 2016 by Karthi Mariappan, Nilam Chand Jain, and Srinivasan S, who were previously employed by Zoho. As a B2B startup, Hippo Video enables its users to produce, disseminate, and distribute videos to improve results for sales, marketing, and customer success teams. Using generative AI, the platform is a video marketing and sales engagement solution that creates hyper-personalized videos to increase engagement and enhance the likelihood of acquiring clients.
Hippo Video’s CEO and co-founder, Karthi Mariappan, stated that their platform’s ability to produce hyper-personalized and interactive videos humanizes conversations and enables sales teams to distribute customized videos at scale. This, in turn, leads to a rise in engagement and pipeline, resulting in higher revenue and win rates. With the recent infusion of $8 million in funding, the company aims to reach more enterprises that require automated video technology to distinguish themselves from their competitors.
The recent funding round, led by Dallas Venture Capital (DVC), marks Hippo Video’s second fundraising activity in over two years, with the previous Series A round in 2019 raising $4.5 million, headed by Alpha Wave Incubation. Before that, the startup received $1.5 million as part of a seed round facilitated by Sequoia Surge accelerator. The latest injection of capital has brought Hippo Video’s total funding to $14 million.
Hippo Video has a current client base of over 5,000 companies globally, which includes prominent names such as British Airways, Panasonic, HP, Seismic, Genesys, and Freshworks. According to the company’s claims, it has increased its clients’ response rates by three times and has reduced the sales cycle by 40%.
The funding announcement comes at an intriguing time for Indian enterprise tech startups, as the SaaS industry remains an appealing prospect for investors. However, the sector is also facing the repercussions of the ongoing worldwide economic slowdown.
Due to the economic downturn, numerous prominent firms have reduced their SaaS expenditures, leading many enterprise technology companies to raise prices on their products in order to counterbalance this decline. Additionally, the industry has experienced significant job cuts in India, including 80 layoffs at Exotel, 90 dismissals at FarEye, and 130 firings at SirionLabs.
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