Druva, a software company that sells cloud data backup companies and products, announced today that it has closed a $147 million round of capital. Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), a community that manages Quebec’s pension fund, led the round, which also saw participation from Neuberger Berman. Prior traders including Atreides Management and Viking Global Investors assign capital into the deal, as smartly.
Druva last raised a $130 million round led by Viking in mid-2019 at around a $1 billion valuation. At the time TechCrunch commented that the company’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) backup service was tackling a large market. (TechCrunch also coated the company’s $51 million round back in 2016 and its $80 million raise from 2017.)
Since then SaaS has endured to develop at a rapid clip, including a sturdy 2020 spurred on by COVID-19 boosting digital transformation efforts at companies of all sizes. In that context, it’s no longer graceful to leer Druva assign together a fresh capital round.
A fresh tie-up between Dell and Druva, first reported in January of this year, was formally announced earlier this month. The possibility of Druva by Dell may well assist provide the unicorn with a customer base to promote into for a while. TechCrunch wrote about Druva earlier this year, at some point of the reporting path of the company said that it had “almost tripled its annual revenue in three years.”
Its fresh round did encompass some secondary shares, which Neuberger Berman managing director Raman Gambhir described as no longer easy to snag at some point of a call with TechCrunch. He explained that some of the secondary sales were as a consequence of some prior funds reaching their cease-of-life cycle. Druva CEO Jaspreet Singh pressured out that his backers are working to fabricate what’s finest for the company instead of merely maximizing their returns at some point of a joint interview.
Singh instructed TechCrunch that trade at Druva is accelerating. Normally we’d reveal that that sounds appreciate IPO fodder, especially as Druva passed the $100 million ARR threshold back in 2019. Nevertheless, as the company has been making IPO noise for a while, it’s hard to foretell when it may pull the plight off. Our coverage of the company’s 2016 round notorious that the company may well saunter public inside of a year. And our coverage of its 2019 funding included Singh telling TechCrunch that an IPO was 12 to 18 months away.
It probably is, now, nevertheless that’s beside the point. With refreshed accounts, a market moving in its route, and some early investor relieved in its latest funding the company has quarters value of time to play with. Aloof, Singh did stress that its fresh financing round did retract out traders that he said is constructing a long-term place; that’s the variety of verbiage that CEOs break out when they are constructing a pre-IPO cap table.
Gambhir instructed TechCrunch that his firm has already requested shares in Druva’s eventual IPO. Perhaps we’ll stumble on Fidelity display up with a $50 million examine in a few months.
Each startup that raises capital tells the media that they are going to make train of the funds to expand their staff, double down on their tech and, often, invest in their saunter-to-market (GTM) motion. Druva is rarely any exception, nevertheless its CEO did present TechCrunch that his company at the moment has over 200 originate GTM positions. That’s quite a few. Presumably that employ will assist the company maintain its announce rate sturdy in percentage phrases as it does, finally, leer to checklist.
This is yet another announce round for a late-stage, enterprise-facing software company. However it absolutely’s also a round into a company that had to transfer its operations to the United States when it was based, at the behest of its traders per Singh. And Druva has accomplished some fairly neat cloud work, it instructed TechCrunch earlier this year, to be certain that it can defend software-appreciate margins despite material storage loads.
It’s an S-1 that we’re taking a leer forward to. Start the countdown.
Offer:
Druva raises $147M at a valuation north of $2B as the cloud rush continues
