Social management platform Sprinklr nets $40 million it ‘didn’t need’

Social startup Sprinklr, which reports it is growing by leaps and bounds, announced today it has raised $40 million in a fourth round of funding and is launching a paid social media management module.

“We really didn’t need this funding,” marketing VP Jeremy Epstein told VentureBeat. He said the company is aiming — and currently on target — for 300 percent growth this year, on top of 300 percent last year and 400 percent in 2012. The fact that the funding round was led by an investment firm like ICONIQ Capital, he said, was a vote of confidence in the company’s direction.

Epstein said the money will be used in support of client success teams, marketing, and “building the world’s best product.”

Forrester Research has described Sprinklr’s product as “the most powerful technology on the market” among social relationship platforms. In February, the company acquired social analytics firm Dachis Group. Reporting nearly 500 enterprise customers, the New York City-based Sprinklr has offices in London, Austin, and India, and is about to open one on San Francisco.

The core product provides a set of social software modules around a central architecture – social publishing, social asset management, mobile, reporting, governance, enterprise integration, campaign management, and others. Its competitors include Lithium, HootSuite, Salesforce, Buffer, and SocialFlow.

Sprinklr‘s key differentiator from the many offerings out there for managing social media, Epstein told us, is that his company is “the only one that offers an integrated platform, end-to-end, for everything a company needs to do in social.” (But we’re sure many of those competitors would say exactly the same thing.)

The launch of the paid management module, the company posted on its blog, makes it “the world’s first fully integrated owned, earned, and paid solution for large enterprises.”

With paid media, Epstein said, there is now a “large single view of the customer” across social media and across media types — paid, owned, and earned. The paid module is expected to be launched within six weeks.