SiftHub, an innovative AI startup founded by Manisha Raisinghani, the former CTO and co-founder of LogiNext, has successfully raised $5.5 million in seed funding. The company's goal is to enhance its AI assistant, specifically designed to empower sales and presales teams by allowing them to shift their focus from tedious tasks to building meaningful customer relationships.
The generative AI assistant targets the numerous non-sales activities that burden sales personnel, such as data entry into CRM systems, filling out requests for proposals (RFPs), researching customer information, and creating presentation decks. By integrating with essential platforms like Google Drive, Slack, Zendesk, HubSpot, and Salesforce, SiftHub enables sales and presales teams to interact with its AI assistant through simple conversations. This functionality allows them to seamlessly complete infosec questionnaires, vendor assessments, and file RFPs and requests for information (RFIs). The assistant is accessible via various formats, including Slack and Microsoft Teams bots, Microsoft add-ins, a Chrome plugin, and a web app, and it provides support in 10 languages, including Spanish and German.
“When salespeople engage with businesses, they should prioritize relationship-building, which directly enhances revenue,” Raisinghani shared. “By reducing the need for numerous presales professionals to handle technical tasks, we save time and positively affect the bottom line.”
SiftHub's AI assistant is constructed using open-source large language models (LLMs) and employs retrieval augmented generation (RAG) technology. This approach enhances the quality of AI-generated content by utilizing additional data sources, thereby limiting hallucinations—a common issue where AI produces incorrect or misleading information. The startup also implements cross-encoders, which analyze two queries simultaneously to improve the accuracy of responses.
“We prefer to abstain from providing an answer rather than risk giving an inaccurate one,” Raisinghani stated. While the system might return 5% fewer responses, she confidently asserts that at least 75% of the AI’s answers will be accurate.
Additionally, SiftHub's “smart search algorithm” prioritizes recent documents and knowledge sources to ensure relevant information is readily available, according to Raisinghani.
After over a decade with LogiNext, Raisinghani identified the need for a solution like SiftHub while advising blockchain startup Polygon Labs in 2022 on its enterprise strategy. She realized that accessing information about Polygon was challenging due to its dispersal across multiple platforms. Sales and presales teams require extensive insights into their company and operations to effectively connect with potential customers, but gathering this information often involves tedious searches through disorganized channels.
To refine her understanding further, she spoke with approximately 200 users, which allowed her to categorize their responses into various use cases, ultimately honing in on sales and presales teams. “Sales teams often have a shadow team—presales or solutions engineers—who are the unsung heroes of the organization, handling technical tasks from filing RFPs to answering customer queries,” she elaborated. “By saving time for both sales and presales, salespeople can devote more time to nurturing relationships.”
The market for AI startups that enhance sales and presales operations has surged recently, particularly with the rise of generative AI. Companies ranging from industry giants like Salesforce and Zoom to emerging startups like Quilt and People.ai have developed GenAI-powered tools to help sales professionals simplify routine processes such as filling forms, generating email drafts, and populating CRMs with customer information.
However, Raisinghani believes SiftHub stands out by integrating deeper into clients’ business workflows and addressing the entire sales response challenge, rather than merely serving as a “wrapper” for an existing AI model.
The startup is leveraging Raisinghani's extensive experience in scaling startups and its talented team of 15, which includes several former entrepreneurs. “When committing at least 10 years of my life to a project, it's essential to prioritize excitement and belief in its potential for the long term,” she noted. Headquartered in the U.S., SiftHub also has an R&D team based in Mumbai, India.
The new funding will be directed toward expanding the product R&D team, enhancing the platform, and advancing the company’s market presence. This seed round was co-led by Matrix Partners India and Blume Ventures, with additional investment from Neon Fund, along with several executives and founders from companies like Superhuman and Razorpay.
Initially, SiftHub is focusing on B2B enterprises catering to mid-market and enterprise customers with revenues between $50 million and $500 million. The AI assistant is currently in a testing phase with a select group of users, with plans for a “full-scale launch” later this year.
“Today's buyers engage with sales teams later in the purchasing process and come equipped with advanced questions. Consequently, the expectations for sales teams have evolved—they now require in-depth product, technical, and legal knowledge to secure wins. Unfortunately, sales and presales teams often lack the necessary tools for this new landscape. We are inspired by SiftHub’s vision of leveraging AI to manage product knowledge, allowing sales to concentrate on fostering relationships,” said Pranay Desai, a partner at Matrix Partners India.
“Manisha’s second venture in the SaaS sector is powered by over a decade of entrepreneurial success, and her team is creating a transformative AI platform that has the potential to revolutionize sales and presales processes. We are thrilled to support SiftHub on this ambitious journey,” added Sanjay Nath, a partner at Blume Ventures.
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