Zuora raises $6.5Mn in series A round

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California: K.V. Rao cofounded Zuora, California based provider of SaaS for subscription management and billing, today announced that it received a $6.5 million Series A round of funding led by Benchmark Capital. Additional investors include founders from Salesforce.com and WebEx. Zuora plans to use the funds to successfully deploy its next-generation platform, to further drive product development, and to expand sales and marketing programs. Headquartered in Redwood City, Zuora has created an on-demand platform designed to simplify the way online subscription services are purchased, billed, and provisioned. It replaces the cumbersome manual processes or expensive billing systems employed today with a hosted solution that delivers the flexibility and simplicity needed to conduct seamless, ongoing customer transactions. Using Zuora, online service providers can now easily offer tailored subscription services that adapt to changing customer needs. Zuora was founded by three SaaS industry veterans in 2007. Tien Tzuo, chief executive officer, was the 11th employee at Salesforce.com, serving in a variety of executive positions including chief marketing officer and most recently chief strategy officer. During his nine-year tenure, he helped shape the company, growing sales from zero to nearly $1 billion. K.V. Rao, president, joined WebEx as an early employee, where he was instrumental in forging key alliances and signing on fortune 50 companies. Cheng Zou, chief technology officer, architected and led the implementation of WebEx's order-to-cash system, which manages the subscription lifecycle process. The Zuora founding team is also joined by experts from Accenture, Oracle, and Postini (now Google). "After spending nine years at Salesforce.com evangelizing the SaaS model, it became clear to me that not only software but entire industries will move to a pay-as-you-go model," said Tzuo. "Our vision is to create a new platform for subscription businesses, analogous to the way PayPal developed automated online payments, and Benchmark Capital is the ideal strategic partner to help us get there."