New Delhi

Creatio, a popular low-code software platform that focuses on customer relationship management, in essence, is CRM, and a close rival to Salesforce, announced it had just raised $200 million in a new funding round. This capital influx rocketed Creatio into "unicorn" status with a valuation of $1.2 billion.

Founded in 2014, Creatio has grown significantly with 700 employees based in seven global offices, including Poland and Ukraine. The customer base is a diverse array of middle to large-sized enterprises. Notable clients include Coca-Cola and MetLife. The company has yet to turn a profit despite its meteoric rise.

The recent funding round was led by Sapphire Ventures, while StepStone Group participated in it, along with current investors Volition Capital and Horizon Capital. The new investment gives Creatio plenty of momentum off the back of several years of strong revenue growth, during which annual revenues climbed 50 per cent for the company. It previously raised $68 million in 2021 after a period of "bootstrapping" when it did not raise any external funding.

Its founder and CEO, Katherine Kostereva, outlined how financially prudent and efficient the firm is. Creatio is cash flow break-even and capital efficient, she said.

"Creatio's underlying low-code automation platform provides this freedom to automate your workflows on the fly," Kostereva said in an interview.

Kostereva also expressed satisfaction with the new investment partners while underscoring that the founding team retains control over the company's strategic course: "We're very happy to have our partner investors on board, but the control over the strategy stays with the founding team," she added.

The new funding will be ramped up in product development, particularly across generative artificial intelligence (AI). The technology is expected to improve automation in marketing and sales-related tasks, further boosting the platform's capabilities.

While the overall market for low-code and no-code startups has cooled from a funding frenzy in 2021, Creatio makes a distinction by focusing on specific business processes, said Rajeev Dham, managing director at Sapphire Ventures. "They aren't just a general-purpose no-code platform. They are no-code with an architecturally flexible backend, while focusing on a pretty big market," Dham said.

The strategic actions taken by Creatio with respect to niche business applications and the commitment to innovation help turn out one in the competitive landscape of low-code platforms. With its new funding, it will be able to take another step further into AI-driven automation, cementing its status as one of the major CRM options.