Most small businesses today don’t have a dedicated staff to handle their IT needs. Take restaurants, for an example. They have likely outsourced this job to contract IT professionals to save some expenses.
Every time they need to buy a point-of-sale machine, a printer, new computers, or assign business emails to employees, they reach out to a trusted IT advisor, who then works with vendor partners to secure products and services that the business needs.
A former investor at Accel spotted an opportunity in this space and is tackling it with her new startup Zomentum. The U.S.-headquartered startup’s platform allows these IT partners to bring their entire sales process together, a phenomenon she said is helping these IT professionals increase their revenue and close more sales in less time.
Businesses can’t afford to hire dedicated IT staff, so Zomentum is hoping to build a strong IT partner network that can serve as an effective sales channel to promote the hyperlocal IT market.
On Tuesday, three-year-old Zomentum announced it has raised $13 million in its Series A round led by Greenoaks Capital and existing investors Elevation Capital and Accel. The new round, which brings Zomentum’s to-date raise to $17.1 million, also saw participation from Eight Roads Ventures.
“SMBs are often so focused on helping customers that they end up strapped for time to select the right technology that suits their business needs. Increasingly, more and more IT channel partners are assuming the role of trusted advisors to these SMBs for their technology needs,” said Shruti Ghatge, co-founder and chief executive of Zomentum.
Citing internal research, Zomentum said average IT partners on its platform are able to create documents 70% faster, close twice as many deals with a 600% increase in deal value, and are seeing 2X increase in conversion.
“We see an opportunity to leverage the power of AI and data science to enable business insights for these channel partners. We want our partners and their clients to leverage AI-enabled Business Intelligence to help gain actionable insights and take smart decisions, something that until now, was available only to enterprises,” said Rahil Shah, co-founder and chief technology officer of Zomentum.
More than 80% of Zomentum customers today are in the U.S., and Ghatge said the startup will deploy the fresh capital to expand its presence in the market and broaden its product offerings.
More to follow…
