Apollo.io, a business-to-business (B2B) sales and intelligence and engagement platform, stated it received $100 million in a Series D funding exercise at a valuation of $1.6 billion, making it one of the first sales-tech unicorns minted this year. New investor Bain Capital Ventures, the venture capital arm of the namesake private equity giant, and existing investors Sequoia Capital, Tribe Capital, and Nexus Venture Partners participated in this round. With the latest funding, the US-based company has raised close to $250 million so far.

This investment nearly doubled Apollo.io’s valuation since its last raise, said Tim Zheng, co-founder and CEO. The fresh round comes a year after Apollo.io raised $110 million in its Series C round led by Sequoia Capital in March 2022. Tribe Capital, Nexus, and NewView Capital also joined the Series C round. Apollo.io said it will deploy the fresh proceeds to expand its headcount and to continue building its go-to-market strategy. Founded in 2015, Apollo.io provides sales and marketing teams with easy access to verified contact data for over 270 million B2B contacts, along with tools to engage and convert these contacts in one unified platform.

The company claims to have grown its revenue nine-fold over the last two years. It says it serves over 3 million go-to-market professionals at over 500,000 companies, from startups to global enterprises, including Qualtrics, Customer.io, and Census. “In line with our mission to make world-class go-to-market solutions simple and accessible to all, we have experienced unprecedented product-led growth during a time of economic uncertainty,” said Zheng. Apollo.io is among the bunch of Nexus Venture’s bet on startups based in the US having some Indian presence. The homegrown venture capital firm's US bets have worked as a hedge to its India portfolio. Its other such bets include Hasura, MinIO, and Blueshift Labs.

Meanwhile, Apollo.io is the second Nexus portfolio company to enter the unicorn league of startups with a valuation of at least $1 billion. Last week, Mumbai-based quick-commerce platform Zepto became India’s first unicorn in 2023. The startup raised $200 million as part of its Series E funding round led by global asset manager StepStone Group. The round, which valued Zepto at $1.4 billion, also saw investments from Goodwater Capital as well as existing investors Nexus Venture Partners, Glade Brook Capital, and Lachy Groom.