Druva, the creator of data protection solutions for SMEs, announced this morning that it has raised $12 million in series B funding. The round was led by Nexus Venture Partners, with participation from existing investor, Sequoia Capital. Jishnu Bhattacharjee of Nexus Venture Partners will be joining Druva’s board of directors as a result of this investment, joining Sequoia Capital Managing Director Shailendra Singh, Ramani Kothandaraman, Co-founder and COO of Druva, and and Yoram Novick, CEO and founder of Topio.
The series B round adds to the $5 million Druva raised in April of 2010, bringing total investment to just north of $17 million. The startup’s new infusion of capital will be used to expand sales across North America, Europe, and Asia.
Founded in 2007, the Mountain View-based enterprise company now has more than 800 customers, protecting more than 300,000 laptops and devices across the globe, and is beginning to thrive in a market in which it faces competition from the likes of EMC Avamar, Symantec, and Autonomy.
Druva’s inSync software (its flagship product) allows companies to take advantage of automated backups of laptops, smartphones, and tablets, protecting corporate data for both in-office and remote users. The software also allows enterprises to retrieve data and make one-click restores of any file or “backup volume from a browser or iOS and Android devices”, according to the Druva team.
The startup’s value proposition is that it offers backups over LAN, WAN, and VPN networks and makes backups more efficient by de-duplicating data — in other words, storing only a single copy of files and data uploaded by a network’s users. This de-duplication allows Druva’s backups to rank at speeds ten times those of its competitors, and enables companies to save 90 percent on bandwidth and storage, while maintaining high rates of accuracy for both Outlook and Office applications. Druva’s software also gives enterprises the option to store their data on location, in the cloud, or via web-connected data centers.
According to Sheila Childs, Vice President of Research at Gartner, enterprise organizations are beginning to become aware of the inadequate protection of important data on corporate laptops and mobile devices. As mobile workers are integral to the success of many businesses and carry data that would be nearly impossible to reconstruct if their corporate device were damaged or stolen, she said, solutions like that offered by Druva are becoming essential to SMEs looking to secure their sensitive data.