Chargebee was founded in 2011 by Krish Subramanian, Rajaraman Santhanam, Saravanan KP, and Thiyagarajan T in Chennai, India. They’d been running a consulting firm and watched multiple clients struggle with the same problem: managing recurring subscriptions without building custom billing logic from scratch.
The platform handles the full subscription lifecycle — plan creation, pricing experiments, trial management, upgrades, downgrades, proration, dunning (failed payment recovery), and revenue recognition. It integrates with payment gateways like Stripe, Braintree, and Adyen rather than processing payments directly.
Chargebee raised over $230 million in funding, reaching a $3.5 billion valuation in its 2022 Series G round. Investors include Tiger Global, Sequoia Capital India, Sapphire Ventures, and Insight Partners. The company moved its headquarters from Chennai to San Francisco as it expanded globally.
The platform supports 480+ recurring billing scenarios out of the box — metered billing, tiered pricing, volume discounts, add-ons, coupons, and gift subscriptions. Chargebee’s RevRec module handles ASC 606 / IFRS 15 compliant revenue recognition, which is crucial for SaaS companies going through audits or preparing for an IPO.
Chargebee serves over 6,500 customers including Freshworks, Calendly, Study.com, and Pret A Manger. The company employs more than 1,200 people across San Francisco, Chennai, Amsterdam, Sydney, and other offices.
