Zerto, the disaster recovery startup, has raised $53m in equity and venture debt financing. It will use the money to bolster its cash position and on updating its software.
Details are thin – the valuation is not disclosed and there is no momentum press release boasting of sales growth. Also the capital raising comes less than three months after significant layoffs. This looks defensive and it would be no surprise if this is a down round.
CEO Ziv Kedem said in a statement today: “This is another milestone for the business and allows us to confidently push forward with our plans to provide customers with a solution for their next generation business realities.”
Zerto raised $70m four years ago in its previous funding round. Established in 2009, Zerto is a startup only in the sense that it has not yet filed for IPO. The company claims more than 8,000 customers and over 1,500 resellers. Entirely unconfirmed and unsourced revenue estimates range from $104m-$140m.
Our take is that Zerto needs to add cloud-native and general backup strings added to its bow before it can envisage an exit. Datrium and others are pushing hard on the ransomware disaster recovery front. Also Kasten and Portworx shows that basic containerised app DR is possible through Kubernetes.
Zerto, by contrast, looks a bit old-fashioned and expensive. The company has to develop great technology to preserve and extend the customer base into cloud-native apps. It also needs to make progress with a continuous journalling approach to general backup.
