Billion Dollar Unicorns: Will Apttus Take The Plunge? -

Billion Dollar Unicorns: Will Apttus Take The Plunge?

Mar 12, 2018Jeremy ParkinsonFinance0

According to Gartner, the market for configure, price, and quote (CPQ) software was worth about $878 million in 2016 and is expected to grow 20% per year through 2020. Billion Dollar Unicorn Apttus is a leading player in the space that is expected to go public soon.

Apttus’ Journey

Apttus was founded in 2006 by Kirk Krappe, Neehar Giri, and Nathan Krishnan. It was initially a cloud-based contract lifecycle management software company, and it later evolved into a CPQ solution to help companies manage and personalize their sales contracts. Apttus was initially bootstrapped by building on Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform. It was particularly successful with overseas users and within a couple of years, shot to $5 million in revenue.

Today, it is the leader provider of Quote-to-Cash (QTC) and Contract Lifecycle Management (CLM) solutions. Its solutions help improve revenues for organizations through its QTC, CPQ, Contract Management, E-Commerce, and Revenue Management software solutions. Its hybrid cloud platform Apttus Intelligent Cloud utilizes technologies from Salesforce, Microsoft, and IBM. Its Intelligent Middle Office platform allows enterprises to automate and optimize revenue and commercial relationship management processes. Its Applied Artificial Intelligence offering Max enables enterprises to achieve superior business outcomes.

Apttus’ Financials

Apttus was bootstrapped initially for seven years and generated multi-million dollars in revenues. It does not disclose details of its financials but analysts estimate that the company earned $150 million in revenues in 2016.

It first raised venture funding in 2013 and since then has raised $404 million from investors including Gulf Islamic Investments, Kuwait Investment Authority, Salesforce Ventures, Iconiq Capital, IBM, PremjiInvest, and K1 Capital. In September 2017, it raised $55 million at an estimated valuation of $1.75 billion. In an earlier round in September 2016, it had raised $88 million$150 million in revenues in 2016. Last month, Apttus received $75 million in growth financing from Golub Capital.