Bhavin Turakhia's email startup Titan raises $30 mn, valued at $300 mn

It's the first funding raised by Titan. Along with investment from Automattic, Titan will also be able to leverage the huge presence of WordPress across the globe

Titan, the professional email startup founded by serial entrepreneur Bhavin Turakhia, has raised $30 million investment from Automattic, the parent company of WordPress. The investment marks the single largest investment ever made by Automattic and values Titan at $300 million.

This is the first funding raised by Titan so far. Along with investment from Automattic, Titan will also be able to leverage the huge presence of WordPress across the globe.

Titan is available to users exclusively through its partnerships with leading Web Presence Providers, including WordPress. WordPress powers 42 per cent of the world's websites between the open-source software and Automattic's commercial WordPress offering. For anyone purchasing a new website on WordPress.com,Titan provides a professional means of establishing relationships with their customers over email while they work on their site.

"Email is used by over a sixth of the global population for work, yet very little innovation has happened in business email over the last two decades,” said Bhavin Turakhiya, Founder and CEO of Titan. "In Titan, we've built a platform specifically designed for professionals and businesses with features that drive their goals–streamlining workflows, automating tasks and making conversations richer and more contextual."

At present Titan has a user base of 100,000 and Turakhia intends to take it up to four to five million in the next 2-3 years. Titan's features are designed to bring businesses closer to their customers. With Titan's Scheduled Send, for example, users can time their new emails to send when they're most likely to be read. And with Follow-Up Reminders, businesses can ensure that they stay persistent when following up on leads. Titan also includes Email Templates, which allow users to quickly send out new emails and recurring responses without having to draft them from scratch.

“We are excited to make our largest strategic investment to date in Titan, and we are working to integrate it deeply on WordPress as a tool to help customers build a professional brand online,” said Matt Mullenweg, founder and CEO of Automattic.

Serial entrepreneur

The investment in Titan comes on the heels of last month's announcement that Zeta, Turakhia’s modern banking startup, reached unicorn status with a $1.45 billion valuation following a $250 million investment from SoftBank.

Turakhia has been a successful serial entrepreneur. After co-founding Directi in 1998 with his brother, Divyank Turakhia, the two exited the business in 2014 in a $160 million transaction with Endurance (now Newfold Digital). Turakhia then went on to start Radix, a leading internet domain registry, and Zeta, the emerging leader in modern banking for customers worldwide.

Radix has been scaling fast in the internet domain registry (ngTLD) player segment with over 5 million domains under management. Through its portfolio of just 10 TLDs, Radix commanded over 25% market share of new gTLD domain registrations in 2020.