How Chargebee survived (and thrived) against behemoth Stripe

The SaaS startup that offers a subscription billing solution raised $55 million in the middle of a pandemic. It’s up against a $36-billion global payments giant. But they’re not just competitors

Chargebee, a nine-year-old startup that helps businesses of all sizes simplify and manage subscriptions, has raised $105 million till date

It claims to serve nearly 3,000 businesses, including Okta, Freshworks, Fujitsu, and Calendly. This number is growing 100% year-on-year, according to the company

Chargebee faces competition from American payments giant Stripe, which offers billing as a feature within its platform

Despite directly competing, Chargebee and Stripe also work with each other, which helps meet the strategic objectives of both companies

Earlier this month, Chargebee, a San Francisco and Chennai-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) startup, raised raised Techcrunch Chargebee raises $55 billion to help businesses move to subscriptions Read more $55 million. The new funding round was led by reputed investors like Insight Partners, Steadview Capital, and Tiger Global. It took the nine-year-old startup’s total funding to $105 million.

What made this round notable was that it was inbound—the investors approached the company rather than the other way round.

AUTHOR

Sumanth Raghavendra

Sumanth is a serial entrepreneur with more than eighteen years experience in running startups. He is currently the founder of Deck App Technologies, a Bangalore-based startup attempting to re-imagine productivity software for the Post-PC era. Sumanth’s columns appear regularly in leading publications. He holds MBA degrees from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore and Thunderbird, The American Graduate School of International Management, USA.

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