Dennis Thankachan isn’t someone you’d expect would launch a digital procurement startup.
After college, Thankachan went to work for Goldman Sachs as an investment banker. Two years later, he left for a hedge fund, PointState Capital, where he helped to manage equity investing.
At PointState, which specializes in telecommunications, Thankachan said he encountered an unexpected challenge: having to make multiple phone calls and wait weeks to procure networking technology. Inspired to try modernizing the process, Thankachan founded Lightyear, a firm that helps companies obtain internet, SD-WAN, and other essential networking infrastructure.
With Lightyear, Thankachan says his goal was to make the process of buying telecom infrastructure “kind of like buying socks on Amazon.” Historically, he says, it’s been difficult for companies to obtain data like what equipment should cost and where providers are available.
“Prior to Lightyear, and still today, most enterprises buy and manage their telecom with manual effort, spreadsheets, and email,” Thankachan told TechCrunch. “Lightyear is the first and only software product to digitize and automate this entire life cycle.”
Lightyear offers the ability to select from networking services and find providers in a given area, sortable by costs. In its online marketplace, companies can interact with vendors and get price quotes. Once they make a purchase, Lightyear helps manage service installation, and then optionally automatically renews the service when the contract is up.
Recently, Lightyear moved into inventory management and bill payment. The platform can monitor and pay telecom service invoices, as well as establish a system of record for an organization’s network.
Lightyear, which was founded in 2019, now has over a thousand networking provider partners and has processed quotes for tens of thousands of services, Thankachan says. The startup is managing millions of dollars of telecom spend for more than 300 customers, including Palo Alto Networks, Five Guys, Pandora Jewelry, and Teladoc.
It helps that there’s pressure on purchasing departments to digitize the way they work. According to a recent PwC digital procurement survey of around 1,000 companies, purchasing departments across all industries are aiming to digitize 70% of their processes by 2027.
This week, New York-based Lightyear closed a $31 million Series B funding round led by Altos Ventures, bringing the 35-person startup’s total raised to $79.6 million. The new cash will be put toward product development and “investing more deeply” in customer experience and support improvements, Thankachan said.
“The raise was opportunistic based on external interest, but allows the company to proactively invest in-depth within core product offerings, new product offerings, and significant improvements in customer support,” he added. “From here out, we don’t intend to be reliant on outside capital for growth or existence, and should reach cash flow break-even within current runway.”
Ridge Ventures, Zigg Capital, Susa Ventures, and Amplo also participated in Lightyear’s Series B.