Ciara was founded in 2019 by serial entrepreneurs Martin Heibel and Konstantin Krauss. Similar to consumer assistants like Amazon Alexa or Google Home, the startup aims to help salespeople conduct sales conversations more effectively over the phone. To this end, Ciara analyzes voice data to provide sales and customer service representatives with insights into deals and conversation management.
"We're convinced that productivity assistants are creating a whole new category of business software. It's all about making people's lives easier in everyday professional situations. Instead of having to deal with dozens of tools, our customers want meaningful, automated solutions. With the Ciara Inside Sales Assistant, we're demonstrating exactly how this is possible: Through real-time, supported dialogues on the phone, Ciara Inside Sales helps employees and teams reach a new level of productivity."
explained Martin Heibel, Managing Director of the young company, 2019 in the course of the financing round led by UVC Partners.
Ciara is expected to accelerate Unique's growth
The Swiss startup Unique is also working on a digital sales assistant. The Zurich-based company's AI platform will record and analyze sales conversations in 12 languages, including Swiss German, to provide real-time insights and coaching to sales teams. It will also automate the team's administrative tasks and enable sales rep training. With the acquisition, Ciara's intellectual property, including deal-closing support, will be integrated into the Unique platform.
“We are very pleased that our recent financing and the acquisition of Ciara will help fuel our rapid growth during this critical time,”
says Manuel Grenacher, CEO and co-founder of Unique. In addition to the acquisition, the startup also announced that it had raised €5.9 million ($6.4 million) in an extension to its seed round.
