Nylas Inc., a startup that helps developers add email-powered features to their applications, today announced that it has secured $16 million in funding from a group of high-profile backers.

The lead investor in the round was Spark Capital. The firm is known for having made successful bets on Twitter Inc., Slack Technologies Inc. and other top tech firms. It was joined by Slack’s own venture fund, former Cisco Systems Inc. boss John Chambers’ personal JC2 Ventures investment vehicle and five other institutional backers.

Nylas plans to invest the capital in hiring more employees to expand operations. The startup offers an application programming interface for integrating services that require access to users’ email accounts with platforms such as Gmail. Developers can use the API to interact with a user’s inbox, calendar and contact list.

Nylas is pursuing a business model that has been successfully applied in other parts of the tech industry. Publicly traded Twilio Inc. provides APIs for implementing communications features in applications, while Stripe Inc. has made its payment processing platform accessible via programming interfaces as well. They all offer the same value proposition, namely sparing developers the hassle of implementing these features from scratch.

The appeal is particularly broad in Nylas’ case because of how widely email content is used by business applications. According to the startup, its API can come handy in a variety of different areas spanning from marketing to backup. A sales analytics service, for example, might scan email exchanges with customers to find ways of improving engagement, while a scheduling tool could sync meetings to workers’ calendars.

Nylas claims to be handling 100 million API requests per day for customers. Its service is used by large organizations such as Comcast Corp., News Corp. and The Hyundai Motor Co. as well as a raft of fellow tech startups.

Nylas has raised $30 million to date from 17 investors.

Image: Pixabay