(Reuters) -Genesys said on Monday it had raised $580 million in a funding round led by Salesforce Ventures, valuing it at $21 billion, as the enterprise software maker seeks to expand its offerings and amid reports the company was planning to go public.
Genesys, which counts payments giant PayPal and Microsoft as its clients, offers a wide range of call center services through products driven by cloud technology.
Other investors in the round included private equity firm ServiceNow Ventures, Zoom Video Communications, funds and accounts managed by BlackRock and D1 Capital Partners.
Bloomberg News reported in October https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-10-08/genesys-owners-are-said-to-weigh-ipo-at-up-to-20-billion-value the firm’s private equity backers were looking to take it public next year at a valuation of about $20 billion.
Genesys, which provides services in partnership with industry bigwigs including Accenture, Amazon Web Services, IBM and Verizon, said its cloud and subscription bookings more than doubled year-over-year from February till July 2021.
Genesys, which said its products are being used by 17 of the top 20 Fortune 500 companies has been looking to grow market share through acquisitions. Earlier this year, it bought AI-based chat software Bold360 to boost personalization of its customer engagement platform.
Genesys was acquired by private equity firm Permira Holdings from Alcatel-Lucent in a deal https://www.reuters.com/article/alcatel-idINL5E7LJ1CT20111019 in 2012, valuing the company at about $1.5 billion.
(Reporting by Manya Saini in Bengaluru; editing by Uttaresh.V and Vinay Dwivedi)
