Portugal has a new unicorn

Today Portuguese startup Talkdesk becomes Portugal’s third unicorn, announcing it has raised $100 million en route to an evaluation of over $1 billion.

“The round boosted the software maker’s valuation above the $1 billion unicorn threshold, said CEO Tiago Paiva, but he declined to specify the exact number,” according to a report by Bloomberg.

Founded in 2011 by Tiago Paiva and Cristina Fonseca, cloud-­based call center software provider Talkdesk today became the fastest Portuguese unicorn ever – taking just seven years to reach a $1 billion evaluation — overtaking Portugal’s first unicorn, Farfetch, which took eight years to reach unicorn status.

“Today’s funding ensures that Talkdesk continues our momentum to lead change in this market and serve our current enterprise customers as well as the rapidly increasing number of global contact centers looking to benefit from a modern cloud platform,” said Paiva in a statement.

To empower customer service representatives and improve the overall customer journey, Talkdesk will double-down on research and development in key technology areas, such as intelligent context-sensitive routing of voice and digital interactions, actionable analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence.

The $100 million in Series B funding was led by Viking Global Investors with participation from existing investor DFJ.

Josh Stein

“We are pleased to continue investing in Talkdesk, which has grown into an enterprise company that is leading the transformation of the $40+ billion contact center market,” said DFJ Partner Josh Stein in a statement.

“We believe that 2019 will be the year that cloud-based contact centers become the rule, not the exception, and Talkdesk will lead the way,” he added.

As the largest round ever raised for a private company in the contact center industry, the funding is strong validation of the company’s current performance and future potential.

This round comes after a year of tremendous momentum. Over the past 12 months, Talkdesk has been named a Visionary in the Gartner CCaaS Magic Quadrant, named a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave: Cloud Contact Centers, and acknowledged as the fastest-growing provider in the cloud contact center software market by Frost & Sullivan.

Nancy Jamison

“Talkdesk is an industry disruptor in the cloud contact center market and is proving how next-generation cloud contact centers are revolutionizing customer care,” said Nancy Jamison, Principal Analyst at Frost & Sullivan in a statement.

Since launching its Enterprise Contact Center Platform, which offers global scalability along with high availability and call quality backed by service level agreements, Talkdesk has gained traction and won large enterprise customers such as The Scotts Company, Discovery Education and Avetta.

According to Portugal Startups, Talkdesk is now the second unicorn of Portuguese origin this year, following the success of OutSystems.

In June, 2018 Lisbon-born OutSystems reached an evaluation of over $1 billion and in March of 2015, Farfetch became the first Portuguese company to valued at $1 billion.