San Francisco-based start-up SiftHub has successfully completed a $5.5 million seed round, addressing the challenges faced by sales teams dealing with complex product details, data, and security. Founder Manisha Rasinghani believes that artificial intelligence (AI) can help sales teams provide immediate and definitive answers to customers’ queries. The platform uses a large language model combined with retrieval-augmented generation tools to fetch information from various applications within the business, such as Slack, Confluence, Salesforce, and Gmail.
The platform aims to improve productivity and speed for sales teams by reducing the time spent on administrative tasks, allowing them to focus more on selling. SiftHub can help sales representatives answer a wide range of questions in real-time, from data retention practices to implementation timetables. Additionally, the platform can automatically complete complex information security questionnaires and requests for proposals (RFPs) during the sales process, ultimately increasing efficiency and potentially leading to increased sales.
Rasinghani emphasizes the importance of giving sales teams more time to connect with prospects and customers, with the vision of increasing this time to 90% from the current 37%. The platform offers different pricing levels depending on the customers’ needs, with the promise that the investment in SiftHub will be offset by improved productivity and sales. The development of the product was based on feedback from over 200 entrepreneurs frustrated with existing sales practices, some of whom have become paying customers as the platform evolved and is preparing for commercialization.
The $5.5 million seed round was led by Matrix Partners India and Blume Ventures, with participation from Neon Fund and several angel investors. Pranay Desai, managing director at Matrix Partners India, notes the changing expectations of sales teams due to buyers engaging later in the buying journey with more advanced questions. Sanjay Nath, a partner at Blume Ventures, highlights Rasinghani’s track record as an entrepreneur, having previously co-founded LogiNext, which raised over $50 million. With over a decade of entrepreneurial experience, Rasinghani and her team are focused on building a game-changing AI platform to revolutionize the sales and pre-sales process.
