Clazar, a company powering software businesses to sell and grow revenue through cloud marketplaces (AWS, Azure, and GCP), announced it had raised a $10 million Series A funding round led by Ridge Ventures and Ensemble VC, with participation from Saurabh Gupta, Managing Partner at DST Global, and existing investors including The General Partnership and Twin Ventures. This funding round brings the total funding to $14 million. Launched in 2023, Clazar is backed by distinguished seed round investors, including Lenny Rachitsky, Vlad Loktev, Vinod Devan, Clara Liang, Kyle Parish, and Neha Narkhede.
Clazar has already served about a hundred paying customers in under a year, underscoring the high demand for its comprehensive GTM automation solution for cloud marketplaces. This is a major opportunity as cloud marketplaces are expected to drive $45 billion in third-party software sales by 2025. Clazar ensures that Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) can automate all components of their cloud sales and grow revenue through a more cost-efficient route to market.
Trunal Bhanse, CEO and co-founder of Clazar noticed the cloud marketplace challenge and complexity firsthand when he led an in-house team of engineers to build and manage Cloud Marketplace operations. And this experience then formed the basis for Clazar, which he launched with co-founder and CTO Aayush Bahuguna. Bhanse and Bahuguna forged their deep expertise in building full-lifecycle marketplace and infrastructure products at Airbnb and also have a history of building high-impact solutions at Facebook, Zenefits, and LinkedIn.
Clazar’s pricing plans are based on the number of private offers generated, not on the revenue closed via marketplaces (unlike other industry players).
KEY QUOTES:
“The engineering effort and resources required to get started on cloud marketplaces have traditionally been high even for enterprises, and often prohibitive for startups and smaller companies, creating a barrier to entry. But the channel is increasingly critical for success. Whatever stage a company is in and wherever they are in their cloud GTM journey, Clazar offers an easy, automated, end-to-end solution across all major cloud marketplaces that keeps up with the constant changes happening in the ecosystem. We’re undergoing a generational shift in the way software is bought and sold, and Clazar is helping to catapult the entire industry forward. We’re grateful to our visionary investors and eager to put this Series A funding to work.”
– Trunal Bhanse, CEO and Co-founder of Clazar
“We’re delighted to be leading Clazar’s recent funding round, aiding the company’s growth as it helps shape the present and future of cloud marketplaces. Clazar is transforming the sales process for software companies going to market. This is an amazing team of people who have experienced the problem firsthand and operate at a different level.”
– Yousuf Khan, Partner at Ridge Ventures
“Trunal and Aayush deeply understand the challenges of cloud marketplaces, and they’re taking all the right steps to modernize the way software is sold. As we’re seeing cloud marketplaces increasingly drive billions in purchases annually, we’re excited to double down on our investment in Clazar and continue to work alongside their top-notch team.”
– Dan Portillo, Co-founder, The General Partnership
“We are excited to support Clazar as they empower SaaS companies to leverage cloud marketplaces. This investment underscores their pivotal role in reshaping GTM strategies and speaks to Trunal and Aayush’s deep experience in this space.”
– Conrad Shang, Managing Partner, Ensemble VC
“Twin Ventures is thrilled to double down on our investment and partnership with Clazar. Since we participated in its seed round in May 2023, it has been incredible to witness the caliber of execution of the Clazar team in enabling their customers to seamlessly sell their software across all cloud marketplaces.”
– Swapnil Shinde, Managing Partner, Twin Ventures
“We aim to democratize cloud GTM access for software businesses by automating the ‘opportunity to cash’ lifecycle of every deal, straight from product discovery through a public presence on the hyperscaler marketplaces to the SalesOps and transaction orchestration that make a deal happen.”
– Aayush Bahuguna, CTO and Co-founder of Clazar
