SaaS data protector Druva has raised $147m in an eighth funding round at a $2bn-plus valuation, and taking the total raised to $475m. The company will use the cash to develop its business in APAC and EMEA.
Jaspreet Singh, Druva co-founder and CEO, said today in a press statement: “The unprecedented events of 2020 have ushered in a generational cloud transformation for businesses, and data‘s increasing value is at the very heart of it. Druva pioneered the cloud data protection category almost a decade ago … This investment and our continued, rapid growth is further validation of our vision for a simple, open, and unified data protection and management platform.”
The SaaS backup trend has strengthened as has public cloud use and Druva’s business has grown in sync, as it were. Competitors such as Clumio, Cohesity, Commvault and HYCU, have entered the SaaS market and Druva has decided it need to grow as fast as it can to maintain its position in the market.
Gartner predicts public cloud services adoption will reach a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.7 per cent from 2019 to 2025. The tech analyst firm also forecasts that 40 per cent of organisations will supplement or completely replace traditional backup applications with public cloud-based systems by 2022.
Druva is seeing rising demand and wants to rapidly scale in response. It told us it plans to grow its presence in APAC and EMEA regions, such as Australia, New Zealand, and the Nordics. A spokesperson said: “These regions are increasingly turning to the cloud to improve business operations, drive agility, and scale with changing needs,” and pointed out;
- According to IDC, APAC is expected to have the highest revenue growth rate for cloud system and service management software between 2020-2024.
- More than 80 per cent of IT decision-makers in the Nordic region estimate that the use of cloud services will increase in the near future.
Comment
Druva believes that expanding its footprint in these regions will provide an opportunity to grow its business faster than otherwise. We think that it is facing rising competition from well-funded and strong companies and needs to grow quickly to avoid being swamped and overtaken by them.
An IPO is a possible eventual outcome and Druva will have to have demonstrated it can survive and prosper against the likes of Cohesity, Commvault, HYCU and Veeam.
