When salespeople are not on the phone or in a meeting, they spend a good portion of their time scouring the web for new leads. It’s an incredibly tedious task that Growbots Inc. has set out to automate.

The three-year-old startup’s mission is supported by $2.5 million in newly raised funding announced Wednesday from Buran Venture Capital, Lighter Capital and several angel investors. Growbots will use the cash to widen the adoption of its outbound sales platform, which employs artificial intelligence to help salespeople find leads more easily.

At the heart of the offering is a database containing the contact information of some 200 million decision-makers at organizations around the world. Machine learning algorithms built into the platform collect new data from the web every day and refresh existing records, an approach that Growbots claims keeps email bounce rates below 10 percent for users. Over on the frontend, salespeople can employ a set of straightforward search filters to narrow down the list to prospects that meet their criteria.

Growbots provides the ability to contact those leads through an automated messaging mechanism that takes care of chores such as sending follow-ups. From there, the platform analyzes replies and tweaks its search filters to help salespeople find the prospects with the highest likelihood of responding.

Between its email automation feature and the AI-powered contact filtering, Growbots claims that the service can save users up to 120 hours of prospecting each month. The startup’s value proposition has helped it win about 500 clients since launching 16 months ago. Greg Pietruszynski, Growbots’ chief executive, told TechCrunch that its annual run-rate is currently $4 million and growing at 10 percent month-over-month.

The new investment should make it easier for the firm to maintain its momentum amid fierce competition in the outbound sales market. Growbots is going up against established players such as Salesforce.com Inc. with its Data.com service as well as numerous fellow startups that are working just as aggressively to establish a foothold in the market.

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