User engagement platform CometChat has raised Rs 40 crore in a venture debt round led by Utah-based Zions Venture Fund. It will use these funds to scale up its product offerings, strengthen its presence in Europe and expand data centres strongly in the APAC region. 
CometChat has raised over Rs 145 crore to date and is backed by investors, including Signal Peak Ventures, Matchstick Ventures, Range Ventures and Unbound Ventures. With headquarters in Denver and Mumbai, it was incorporated in the US in 2019 by twin brothers Anuj Garg and Anant Garg. 

The communication platform as a service (CpaaS) start-up provides enterprises with a full-fledged messaging and communications platform within apps and websites to improve user engagement. It allows users to get real-time engagement and have conversations via messaging, voice calling and HD video chat. 

The software provides user-to-user engagement for a growing customer base via robust offerings. This helps enterprises save hundreds of developer hours and the associated costs companies have to otherwise spend in building this tech from scratch. 

Anuj Garg, co-founder and CEO, CometChat, said, “We are a revenue-focused business continuously growing in large international markets. Thus, our business fundamentals and strong balance sheet have enabled us to raise this round, as we are in a comfortable position to service the debt. The aim is to raise capital for an extended runway of 5 years as we put our growth plans in the fast lane.”

CometChat claims its customer base has grown by 3X in the past year, with product usage increasing by 300 per cent. With a business-to-developer approach, it has handled over 800 million connections. 

In addition to offerings like SDKs and APIs, Open Sourced UI Kits and Widgets, the start-up now has integrated with a large language model chatbot popularly known as ChatGPT.