TAPPING AN UNMET MARKET
LEADS TO RAPID GROWTH
Just a few years ago, completing request for proposal (RFP) documents was an exercise in frustration. Fast forward to today and you’ll find that has all changed with the emergence of RFPIO’s cloud-based response management platform that uses artificial intelligence and the latest technology to transform the RFP process.
Back in 2016, Ganesh Shankar was working at a technology company where he saw first-hand how inefficient and time-consuming typical RFP processes could be. “We were amazed that an automated system wasn’t on the market already so we decided to take matters into our own hands,” Shankar relates.
This observation led to Shankar joining forces with colleagues AJ Sunder, Manish Bafna, and Sankar Lagudu to form RFPIO with a singular mission to revolutionize RFP response processes. Together they developed a cloud-based response management system that enables companies to simplify and automate the RFP and questionnaire response process.
Having identified a clear unmet need, the market response to RFPIO has been, to put it mildly, enthusiastic. The company started on a roll and has never looked back. In its first two years, RFPIO used its initial round of funding from Elevate Capital and others to build out its platform and assemble a base of loyal customers. Then in 2018, RFPIO secured $25 million in funding from K1 Investment Management, providing the capital to accelerate product development and scale operations.
RFPIO now has hundreds of customers including 30 on the Fortune 500 list, such as Adobe, Siemens, LinkedIn and others and more than 40,000 users around the world. RFPIO recently added Express Scripts/Cigna, 25th on the Fortune 500 list, to its fast-growing portfolio of clients.
“This year has been particularly exciting for growth because we’re starting to receive recognition from the industry for the hard work that we’ve been doing,”
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