[Funding] Professional email startup Titan raises $30 Mn from Wordpress-parent at $300 Mn valuation

Serial entrepreneur Bhavin Turakhia's professional email startup Titan has secured a $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. Only last month, Bhavin's modern banking startup, Zeta reached unicorn status. It valued at $1.45 billion following a $250 million investment from SoftBank.

“Email is used by over 1/6th of the global population for work; yet very little innovation has happened in business email over the last two decades,” said Bhavin, 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.”

Bhavin has a long track record of founding highly successful tech startups. He also co-founded 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). Bhavin then went on to start Radix, a leading internet domain registry. He also started Zeta, a modern banking solution for customers worldwide.

Partnering with Automattic

Titan is available to users exclusively through its partnerships with leading Web Presence Providers, including WordPress. WordPress powers 42% of the world's websites between the open-source software and Automattic's commercial WordPress.com 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.

“We are excited to make our largest strategic investment to date in Titan, and we are working to integrate it deeply on WordPress.com as a tool to help customers build a professional brand online,” said Matt Mullenweg, founder, and CEO of Automattic. “We believe in Titan’s potential to create a world-class suite of productivity tools that offer an in-dashboard, customized user experience, in which it gives users and partners ownership and control over their personal data.”

Bhavin’s big three

In addition to Titan, Bhavin’s other ventures, Zeta and Radix, have also seen big wins so far in 2021. For a BankTech startups, Zeta's Series C $250 million funding was one of the single largest investments. Zeta counts over 10 banks and 25 fintech across eight countries among its customers. Radix has grown to become the biggest new internet domain registry player 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. Titan will leverage the investment from Automattic to deepen and expand its product suite. It, thus, aims to deliver even greater value to its current and future customers.