Up till last year, startups in the data & cloud enabling segment were touted as new technologies that were re-defining the way people worked and lived. Now with the pandemic and the consequential changes it has brought to people’s live worldwide, data and cloud-enablers have taken centre-stage that are enabling everything in professional and personal lives.
As per HexGn Data & Cloud Enablers Startup funding report for 2019, the startups in the segment are creating tools that is making unparalleled changes in the tech world. With $14 billion being invested in 2018 through 2019, with investments becoming double-fold in this period.
The investments in the data & cloud enabling segment touched $10 billion last year. This is one industry where Asia has taken the lead in 2019 with the highest investments, closely followed by North America. In terms of individual growth too, data & cloud enabling startups in the region have turned heads. The investments in Asia grew by 20 times while the funding in North America grew 7 times as compared to the previous year, as per HexGn Data & Cloud Enablers Startup funding report for 2019.
Key players whose funding deals helped in growing the investment numbers in 2019 were Tenglong Holding Group, Stack Infrastructure, Vantage Data Centers, Qinhuai Data, and Cologix. Tenglong Holding Group’s Series A round got it $3.7 billion making it the highest-valued deal last year. Stack Data Infrastructure and Vantage Data Centers both made it to the top five funding deals through debt financing rounds of $850 million and $692 million each. A majority of the startups who feature in the top 10 deals hail from the USA, according to HexGn Data & Cloud Enablers Startup funding report for 2019.
There seems to be a growing number of jobs that are now being remotely managed, educational institutions planning on not organising physical classes, and healthcare organisations are also increasing using data and cloud enabler to achieve greater things. Almost every tech-enabled product is being bundled with cloud and data services to ensure seamless functioning.
Startups offering data & cloud enabling services are promising and the same is quite evident from the 14 fold increase in funding rounds in early stage venture phases. Even late stage venture funding activities and investments have doubled while seed funding has grown by three times in comparison to 2018. The segment may see a lot of much needed innovations getting the needed boost through investments in the coming years considering the sheer amount of people working from home.
According to HexGn Data & Cloud Enablers Startup funding report for 2019, Beijing led the pack of top cities with the highest investment received in 2019 with $4.2 billion, followed by San Francisco with $1.8 billion, and Denver with $1.4 billion. Other cities in the top five funded cities were New York and Sydney.
The data & cloud enabler industry was the hottest startup segment in 2019 that gained the unmatched confidence from investors. Based on the data collected in the last two years, the growth in the investment in this sector has grown double fold in 2019. This could perhaps be attributed to the growing number of organisations opting for cloud-based systems and the diverse range of data and cloud enabled services easing lives in various aspects. The investments raised by data & cloud enabling startups grew from $3.8 billion in 2018 to $6.8 billion in 2019. When we looked that country-wise funding patterns, the top five countries to have been favoured with high investments were China, US, Australia, the UK, and Canada.
China
China has made it to the top among all other nations with a total funding of $4.4 billion. It is interesting to note that this feat has been achieved through just four funding rounds last year. The investment in the segment has also grown by more than 200 times in just a year.
The startup that has helped in boosting China’s position in the data and cloud enablers segment globally was Tenglong Holding Group, a venture offering data center-related services. Last year, this venture completed its Series A round picking up $3.7 billion. The other three startups which raised notable investments include Qinhuai Data( $570 million), Inspur Cloud ($87 million), and 17doubao.com ($1.4 million).
In 2018, all the funding activities were only in the early stage ventures. Last year, the funding activities deals in late venture stage deals grew as well, however, most of the investments came in through the early stage venture deals.
US
The biggest names in the data & cloud computing world are headquartered in the US. The country has been among the earliest ones to adopt the technology in workspaces. Last year, the data and cloud enablers startup segment raised $4.1 billion, growing by 90%.
The largest contribution to this figure last year was by data center operator venture Stack Infrastructure that got an investment of $850 million in debt financing. Vantage Data Center, another well known startup in the segment, raised $692 million in debt financing.
Compared to 2018, the investments in private equity grew from 0 to $680 million over the year. There has also been a 20 times increase in the seed investments in 2019. There was some amount of money flowing in through most funding stages, except ICO & crowdfunding, where the investments dropped to zero in 2019.
Australia
In Australia, the total funding in the data & cloud enablers segment from $5 million in 2018 to $332 million in 2019, growing by leaps and bounds. The country’s ecosystem as a whole is younger than many others and such a growth in the investment figure has given it the much-needed boost.
This boost in the segment can be accredited AirTrunk, the only startup in the data & cloud enablers segment that raised funding last year. AirTrunk is responsible for the development and operation of large-scale data centres. The startup got an investment of $332 million in debt financing in 2019.
UK
For data & cloud enabling startups in the UK, the investments that flowed into the sector was halved in 2019. The adoption of data and cloud-based system has been applauded in the UK in past few years, however, the same adoption rate has not translated into growing investments. The total funding in the sector came down $186 million last year.
The top funding deal in the segment was of Onecom which raised $124 million. Five startups in the data and cloud enablers segment raised funding in 2019. These were Stellium ($38 million), Miss Group ($16 million), Bamboo Systems ($4.5 million), and Ori Industries ($2 million).
The funding activities in the data and cloud enablers segment for 2019 were mostly from seed and private equity stages.
Canada
Canada is the fifth highest funded startup nation in the data and cloud enablers segment. Its funding in 2019 amounted to $172 million. The investments fell by 25% as compared to the figures recorded the previous year.
There were two startups that raised funding last year – eStruxture andEideticom. The former provides network and cloud-neutral data center solutions and raised $170 million in debt financing. Eideticom offers a computational storage platform. The venture raised $2 million in a venture round.
Based on the two aforementioned startup deals, the maximum funding came through the debt financing stage in Canada.