New-look integrator Appirio raises $60M

Narinder Singh

Appirio, the systems integrator that pioneered early software-as-a-service implementations, has netted $ 60 million in Series D funding led by General Atlantic. That brings total investment in the company to $ 80 million. General Atlantic, a growth equity firm, joins current investors Sequoia Capital and GGV Capital.

The company built its business by diving into the then-relatively new world of software as a service, helping companies deploy and customize services from Salesforce.com and Google and ensuring that they worked with customers’ older legacy software.

Appirio Chief Strategy Officer Narinder Singh said the company’s revenue has grown 80 percent every year since it was founded almost six years ago, but would not comment on profitability. About 30 percent to 40 percent of its work revolves around Salesforce.com applications, another 30 to 40 percent around the Salesforce.com platform and the rest around Google, he said.

“When we started out, the notion of cloud applications was completetly orthogonal and disruptive to on-premises applications,” said Singh, who spent time at Accenture and SAP before joining Appirio. That disruption gave rise to new-look integrators that didn’t have a vested interest in the older software or older software vendors.

Current Appirio customers are split between companies that are slowly moving more of their workloads to a SaaS model, and younger companies that are fully invested in the newer deployment model, he said.

While Appirio got into the SaaS game early and reaped the rewards as more companies got comfortable buying into the SaaS model, but now most integrators can talk the SaaS game. Still, with a roster of customers including Carnival, Home Depot, Starbucks and Medtronic, Appirio has a good foundation to build on.

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