June 26 (Reuters) - Creatio, a low-code software

platform for customer relationship management that competes with

tech giant Salesforce ( CRM ), has secured $200 million in a new

funding round that boosts its valuation to $1.2 billion, the

company said on Wednesday.

The funding, led by Sapphire Ventures, came after Creatio's

revenue increased at 50% annually for a few years.

StepStone Group and existing investors Volition Capital and

Horizon Capital also participated in the funding round.

Previously, Creatio raised $68 million in 2021 after a few

years of "bootstrapping", which means keeping the company afloat

without raising external funding. The company is not currently

profitable.

"Creatio's underlying low-code automation platform provides

this freedom to automate your workflows on the fly," Katherine

Kostereva, Creatio's founder and CEO said in an interview.

"We're very happy to have our partner investors on board,

but also the control over the strategy stays with the founding

team," she added.

Founded in 2014, Creatio employs 700 people across seven

global offices, including Poland and Ukraine. It serves middle

to large size enterprises including AMD, Coca Cola and MetLife ( MET ).

The company plans to utilize the new funding to further

accelerate its product development, using generative artificial

intelligence (AI) to accelerate the automation in marketing and

sales-related tasks.

While low code and no code startups have seen a cool down

from funding frenzy in 2021, Creatio stands out for focusing on

specific business processes, according to Rajeev Dham, managing

director at Sapphire Ventures who led the investment.

"They aren't just general purpose no code platform. They are

no code with a architecturally flexible backend, while focusing

on a pretty big market," said Dham.