With Advent Int on board, Tredence eyes $500 mn in revenue by 2026

At a time when startups are struggling to get new funding, AI-backed data analytics firm Tredence went on to raise $175 million (around Rs 1,435 crore) in series B funding from private equity (PE) player Advent International.

Shashank Dubey, co-founder and chief revenue officer, Tredence says that a major part of this fundraising happened because of the fact they chose to raise it from a PE player rather than the venture capital (VC) funds. The recent funding has valued the company at $500 million.

“We are at a stage where we want to consolidate and scale our business to become the next billion-dollar revenue company in the data science and analytics space. And if you look at this space there aren’t many companies to have crossed the billion-dollar revenue threshold. We want to script that story and then you want a partner who can guide you, provide the ecosystem expertise etc.,” said Dubey.

He believes that PE players are much more well-equipped in this segment than VCs. “We want to be among the top 5-6 bets that our investors have taken, unlike the hundred that VCs do. We closed the funding a week back and are already in talks with the support teams and working on how well we can use the Advent ecosystem to scale,” said Dubey.

Tredence is looking at Advent International to not only grow geographically but also support them in expanding into new verticals like healthcare, life inorganic sciences, and insurance.

One of the areas where it plans to leverage its tie-up with Advent is in inorganic growth. This will also propel the company to its $1 billion target. Without sharing the current numbers, Dubey said that they are targeting the $500 million revenue mark by 2026, and the subsequent $1 billion revenue milestone by 2028-29.

This revenue growth is based on three segments—geography expansion, adding more industry segments, and growing the skills base.

“If we want to be a $500 million firm we have to expand into Europe. We may look for an inorganic strategy to hire talent (acquihire) and finally expand into the industry. We want to diversify into banking and capital as one vertical, life sciences and healthcare as the second, and insurance as the third area. Each will have their own gestation period,” said Dubey.

Tredence already has a few clients in these verticals but 2023 will be focused on getting good momentum.

At present, the company has a total headcount of 2,000 people, about 80 per cent are in India and the rest are in Toronto and the US.

Dubey believes that AI and data analytics will continue to grow and the fact that Advent has invested in Tredence is proof of interest among investors in this segment. “We work with some of the largest companies in the world and our revenue retention is north of 90 per cent. These clients have been with us for 4-5 years,” he added.

Dubey also added that the recent layoffs among big techs have meant that they managed to hire some people from these companies. “We have managed to hire some good talent in the Bay Area due to the layoffs. Rather a few employees who had joined these big tech firms have also come back,” said Dubey.