Chargebee raises $250m amid rise in subscription economy

"We believe every company will be a subscription company in the future," says the co-lead investor in Chargebee's $250m fundraise.

The US-based subscription payment processor has just completed a $250m fundraise—and its co-lead investor believes subscriptions will come to dominate businesses.

"We believe every company will be a subscription company in the future. The predictability of a subscription business model is extremely attractive," said Tejeshwi Sharma, MD, Sequoia India.

The investment round was co-led by Sequoia Capital and Tiger Capital, along with existing investors Insight Partners, Sapphire and Steadview Capital. 

Chargebee says its latest funding round means its valuation has more than doubled to $3.5bn in nine months since it raised $125m in April, which then valued Chargebee at $1.4bn.

In total, Chargebee has raised $470m to date.

Its customers include the likes of Okta, Freshworks, Calendly, Study.com, Pret a Manger and thousands of other subscription services.

It said the new funding will be used to fund product innovation and help its global ambitions as well as support the billing and revenue needs of current and future subscription businesses.

Chargebee pointed to data showing more businesses becoming subscription-based, with UBS predicting that the "subscription economy" will grow to $1.5 trillion by 2025, more than doubling its current $650bn estimate. 

"We built Chargebee to solve infrastructure issues facing high-growth subscription businesses with a product roadmap laser focused on replacing in-house systems orchestrating the complex parts of revenue intelligence like billing and payments.," said Krish Subramanian, CEO and co-founder of Chargebee.

"As subscription offerings continue to rapidly evolve, our focus remains on providing a flexible growth engine to power, capture and understand revenue, all in real time."