Hightouch is the leading Composable CDP and AI Decisioning platform for marketing teams. Build AI agents, uncover insights, and deliver hyper-personalized marketing with all your data. Pulse 2.0 interviewed Hightouch co-founder and CEO Tejas Manohar to gain a deeper understanding of the company.
Tejas Manohar’s Background
What is Tejas Manohar’s background? Manohar said:
“I grew up in Tennessee but started programming at a young age. At 16, I moved to San Francisco to join Segment as one of their first 10 engineers. Segment’s mission was to help marketing teams centralize their customer data and use it to personalize customer experiences. While the idea was good, it was challenging in practice for companies to copy all their data into a new system like Segment. That perspective ultimately led Kashish Gupta, Josh Curl, and me to found Hightouch.”
Formation Of The Company
How did the idea for the company come together? Manohar shared:
“The original idea from Hightouch stemmed from customer feedback on traditional customer data platforms. We spoke with many of the largest companies in the world and heard the same complaint. They could not copy all their data into a SaaS CDP. It was too much work and their data was not unique and could not be squeezed into an out-of-the-box solution.”
“They needed their CDP to sit directly on top of their data warehouses like Snowflake. This led us to create Hightouch, a CDP that allows marketing teams to access and activate data directly from their data warehouses. While CDP was our first product, we’ve always had a bigger vision of how we’d empower a variety of revenue-driving business use cases using data warehouses. Our latest focus is empowering Agentic marketing with AI Agents, which we believe will disrupt how marketing is done today.”
Favorite Memory
What has been your favorite memory working for the company so far? Manohar reflected:
“Most of my favorite memories relate to our customers. It never gets old when you meet with them and they share how your product has made their lives better and helped their business grow. One that stands out is PetSmart. We’ve had the privilege of helping them personalize customer journeys for more than 70 million members of their loyalty program. They’ve also adopted our AI Decisioning solution and seen meaningful business results. I’m very proud of our partnership with them.”
Core Products
What are the company’s core products and features? Manohar explained:
“Our core products are our Composable Customer Data Platform (CDP) and AI Decisioning platform.”
“The Composable CDP allows marketing teams to use data directly from their data warehouse for marketing. There’s tons of valuable data locked away in warehouses– for example, past purchases, web analytics, or product inventory. Typically, when marketers want to access this data to personalize campaigns, they need to ask the data or IT teams for help. This is okay at first, but it’s hard to scale and limits velocity, experimentation, and creativity. With Hightouch, marketing teams can directly access all the data in the warehouse and use it for personalized marketing.”
“Our AI Decisioning product takes data-driven marketing a step further with Agentic AI. Instead of defining every customer segment or rule for personalization, we allow marketers to define goals like ‘drive customers who buy in-store to download our app and order ahead,’ and deploy AI Agents to pursue those goals by deciding the best message to send each customer on a 1:1 basis. It moves marketers from a world of dealing with marketing calendars, rules, and manual A/B tests to focusing on strategy, creative, sifting through insights, and creating the best experiences for their customers.”
“Together, our products make the data warehouse the center of modern business operations and marketing personalization.”
Challenges Faced
What challenges have Manohar and the team faced in building the company? Manohar acknowledged:
“CDP is a highly competitive space. I can list over 10 vendors off hand. Last year, we grew over 120%. What’s worked for us is having very clear differentiation, a product that just works, and persistence.”
“When we created the Composable CDP, it was a new idea– we had to fight hard to challenge the status quo. Now, a few years in, our approach has been validated. Companies are running RFPs specifically for Composable CDPs, and warehouse-centricity and zero-copy CDPs have become the standard at large enterprises.”
“We believe AI Decisioning will play out similarly.”
Evolution Of The Company’s Technology
How has the company’s technology evolved since launching? Manohar noted:
“Initially, our focus was on making data activation from the data warehouse flexible and accessible for technical teams – a technology called Reverse ETL. Over time, we’ve made it easy for marketers to take advantage of that underlying platform by building a user-friendly Composable CDP.”
“Now, our next big evolution is creating something we call AI Decisioning, which can run as part of our Composable CDP or entirely separately. AI Decisioning is a huge breakthrough for how marketing works. Marketers simply set goals and guardrails like ‘reactive these churned customers using this creative’ and then supervise AI agents as they work on this problem at a 1:1 basis with customers. It helps marketers move past scheduling endless e-mail sends and reading endless A/B tests and lets them focus on delivering amazing customer experiences that move metrics.”
Significant Milestones
What have been some of the company’s most significant milestones? Manohar cited:
“Over the past year, we’ve more than doubled our revenue and grown to approximately 170 employees. Along the way, we’ve been honored to work with the world’s biggest customers and built strong strategic partnerships with companies like Snowflake and Databricks. Funding is another type of milestone. We’ve raised $172M in total funding, with the most recent $80M Series C round led by Sapphire Ventures at a $1.2 billion valuation.”
Customer Success Stories
When asking Manohar about customer success stories, he highlighted:
“One standout success is with PetSmart. They use our AI Decisioning platform to personalize marketing communications for each of their 70 million Treats Rewards members, which has led to a significant increase in customer loyalty and engagement. It’s a perfect example of how Hightouch enables companies to use their data more effectively, making real-time, data-driven decisions that lead to tangible business results.”
Funding
When asking Manohar about the company’s funding details, he revealed:
“Absolutely! Hightouch has raised a total of $172M in funding, with our most recent Series C round at $80M, led by Sapphire Ventures. This brings us to a $1.2 billion valuation. That round was later extended with additional investment from Snowflake Ventures and Capital One Ventures, adding further momentum to our vision of AI-powered marketing.”
Total Addressable Market
What total addressable market (TAM) size is the company pursuing? Manohar assessed:
“We’re targeting a huge market – basically the use of data for marketing or any customer experience. While marketing is the focus, we’re seeing customers expand usage of Hightouch into product experiences, e-commerce, building advertising networks, and even customer service. This is a big idea that spans many software categories. We believe the opportunity will only get bigger with agentic marketing and our latest product called AI Decisioning.”
Differentiation From The Competition
What differentiates the company from its competition? Manohar affirmed:
“In competitive markets, what ultimately differentiates companies is their ambition and pace of innovation. This is definitely the case for Hightouch. The best AI is built on top of the best data. Instead of making companies copy all their data into our systems, we directly connect to the source. On top of all this data, we’ve built an agentic marketing platform, or AI Agents that can take a business goal like “drive customers who buy in-store to download our app and order ahead” and decide the best marketing to send each customer 1:1 to make it happen. We believe this is a massive opportunity to disrupt the way marketing is done today. We’re excited to use this new funding to accelerate our vision.”
Future Company Goals
What are some of the company’s future goals? Manohar emphasized:
“Looking ahead, we’re focused on accelerating the development of our AI Decisioning product and expanding our team, particularly in sales and engineering. We’re also continuing to grow our enterprise customer base and helping Fortune 500 companies unlock the full potential of their data. Our ultimate goal is to make data activation and personalization a seamless experience for businesses of all sizes, reshaping how marketing works in the process.”
Additional Thoughts
Any other topics you would like to discuss? Manohar concluded:
“I think it’s important to mention that we’re not just focused on disrupting the CDP market; we’re also committed to helping companies rethink how they use their data across the board. Whether it’s through AI-powered decisioning, better marketing execution, or unlocking new insights from data warehouses, we’re excited to be at the forefront of the next wave of marketing and data innovation. With our funding and growing strategic partnerships, we’re positioning ourselves for even greater success as we tackle new challenges.”
