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SoftBank Capital is expected to lead the $50
million financing round, Kony's largest to date, with a group of
existing and new investors including Insight Venture Partners,
Telstra Ventures and Georgian Partners, the sources told
Reuters.
“This is an exciting time for the company and we are always
looking at different options to build on our leadership in the
enterprise mobility market,” said John Joyce, Kony's chief
financial officer.Representatives for SoftBank and Insight
Venture Partners declined to comment. Representatives for
Telstra Ventures and Georgian Partners were not immediately
available for comment.
Kony, which was founded by Raj Koneru in 2007, generates nearly
$100 million of revenue and is on the path to an initial public
offering, one of the sources said on condition of anonymity
because the discussions were private.
The Florida-based company calls itself the fastest growing
cloud-based mobile application development platform, helping
corporations and other clients build apps for smartphones and
tablets. It currently serves 20 million mobile app users every
day across 45 countries.
Just last year, Kony added 100 new customers including Aetna Inc
<AET.N>, Anheuser-Busch <ABI.BR>, Bayer AG <BAYGn.DE>, the
Coca-Cola Co <KO.N>, Sirius XM <SIRI.O>, SunTrust Banks Inc <STI.N>
and US Foods Inc [USFOO.UL].
Kony has also spent the last few months building out its
executive management bench. It hired Thomas Hogan, former
executive vice president of software at Hewlett-Packard Co <HPQ.N>,
as its chief executive officer. Joyce, a former IBM veteran,
became its vice chairman and chief financial officer.
SoftBank Capital has been steadily building up its startup
investment portfolio, which has included companies in everything
from social media to online retail.
The new financing is expected to allow Kony to get closer to
profitability and will further expand its presence in Asia,
particularly Japan, through SoftBank's connections, one of the
people said.
(Reporting by Nadia Damouni; Editing by Edwin Chan and Lisa
Shumaker)
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