Revenue Delivery Platform leader backed by FTV Capital, Kindred, Notion and 83North

LONDON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Paddle, the Revenue Delivery Platform for B2B Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) companies, today announces it has raised $68 million (£52 million) in Series C funding. The most recent investment was led by FTV Capital, a sector-focused growth equity investor in innovative companies in enterprise technology and services, financial services, payments and transaction processing, with participation from Kindred Capital, Notion Capital and 83North. This brings the total investment raised to date by Paddle to $93 million (£72 million). The funding will be used for continued expansion in the US and globally, as well as further investments in the company’s product, engineering, sales and marketing teams.

Paddle was founded in 2012 by British co-founders Christian Owens and Harrison Rose, with a vision of providing a complete solution to help software companies sell their products. The Paddle team has grown to 140 employees, and Paddle’s Revenue Delivery Platform today serves over 2,000 software companies in 245 countries and territories globally, empowering them to respond to every growth opportunity across customer acquisition, renewals and expansion.

Powerful market forces are reshaping the software industry, particularly the SaaS market, which is predicted to be worth over $105 billion in 2020. Many SaaS companies have seen demand surge during the Covid-19 pandemic as businesses and consumers became increasingly reliant on digital products and services. In fact, Paddle has seen sales by existing sellers accelerate during the pandemic, with particularly strong demand for software that supports distributed teams and collaboration, from VPNs to video calling.

However, SaaS companies are also facing unprecedented competition in an environment where they live or die by customer acquisition costs and their ability to maintain customer loyalty. They have the opportunity to compete and sell in any market in the world, but to do so must manage payments and operations in multiple markets, and navigate an increasingly complex web of international and local tax and data regulations.

As a result, scaling up is no longer just about focusing on building the right product and having the right go-to-market strategy. High-velocity SaaS companies are shifting their focus to a third powerful growth lever, Revenue Delivery, to drive hyper-scale growth by optimising Net Dollar Retention (NDR). Unfortunately, existing revenue delivery infrastructure isn’t ready for the scale and ambition of today’s software companies and businesses are stuck trying to force-fit integrations between legacy payment gateways, billing engines, subscription management tools, and multiple tax, compliance and data governance systems. This is a huge drain on time and resources that can severely limit SaaS companies’ ability to scale.

Paddle’s Revenue Delivery Platform makes it easy for SaaS companies to respond faster and more precisely to every growth opportunity for their business. A single unified platform, Paddle integrates checkout, payment, subscription management, and financial compliance; meaning sellers on the platform can activate new business models instantly, enter new markets with ease, turn on new offerings with one-click, and enable friction-free renewals. This modern approach to revenue delivery empowers CEOs to make informed business decisions quickly and confidently, and frees up teams to focus on the core business rather than operational headaches. Ultimately, using Paddle enables businesses to optimise NDR and deliver business impact that outperforms expectations.

Paddle has seen incredible demand to date, recording an average annual revenue growth of over 175% over the last four years and doubling in the last year alone.

Christian Owens, CEO and co-founder of Paddle, said:

“The beauty of the SaaS model is that if you build a great product, you can sell it to anyone, anywhere in the world. Unfortunately, it is rarely that simple. We created Paddle because we’ve seen first hand the things that limit the growth of a SaaS company often have very little to do with the quality of your product. Dealing with payments, managing subscriptions, localising checkouts in multiple languages and handling tax and compliance across dozens of markets is hugely complex and each of these challenges makes it harder for businesses to scale quickly. Our Revenue Delivery Platform has been built to remove all of this friction for B2B SaaS companies, empowering them to increase NDR by responding faster to every growth opportunity. We’re excited to continue our own growth with this investment and look forward to maintaining momentum in the months and years ahead.”

Kyle Griswold, partner, who led the investment for FTV Capital, added:

“We are witnessing a systemic shift within software, with the ‘growth at any cost’ mindset gradually being replaced by a realisation that businesses must scale more efficiently and with clearer purpose. We’ve been extremely impressed with Christian and Harrison’s ambition and Paddle’s growth to date and we believe they are defining a new category with Paddle’s Revenue Delivery Platform — one that will be critical to helping companies adapt to change while empowering them to take advantage of the huge acceleration in demand for digital products. With more than two decades investing in the SaaS and payments sectors, FTV will bring the best of our domain expertise to accelerate Paddle’s exciting growth.”

About Paddle
The Paddle Revenue Delivery Platform for B2B SaaS companies powers growth across acquisition, renewals and expansion. With Paddle, companies are finally able to transform their revenue delivery infrastructure into a strategic growth lever to respond faster and more precisely to every opportunity. Paddle has 140 talented employees serving over 2,000 software sellers in 245 countries and territories globally. Backed by investors including FTV Capital, Kindred, Notion, and 83North, Paddle aims to define the next wave of B2B SaaS leaders. Visit www.paddle.com or www.twitter.com/PaddleHQ for more information.

About FTV Capital
FTV Capital is a growth equity investment firm that has raised nearly $4 billion to invest in high-growth companies offering a range of innovative solutions in three sectors: enterprise technology and services, financial services, and payments and transaction processing. FTV’s experienced team leverages its domain expertise and proven track record in each of these sectors to help motivated management teams accelerate growth. FTV also provides companies with access to its Global Partner Network®, a group of the world’s leading enterprises and executives who have helped FTV portfolio companies for two decades. Founded in 1998, FTV Capital has invested in more than 120 portfolio companies, including CloudFactory, Derivative Path, EBANX, Enfusion Systems, InvestCloud, Liberis, ReliaQuest, Riskalyze, Sunlight Financial, Sysnet, Tango Card, Vagaro, VPay and successfully exited companies including Empyrean Benefits (acquired by Securian Financial), ExlServices (IPO), Fleet One (acquired by WEX), Globant (NYSE IPO), Health Credit Services (acquired by Ally Financial), MedSynergies (acquired by Optum), Mu Sigma (acquired by shareholders), and WorldFirst (acquired by Ant Financial). FTV has offices in San Francisco and New York. For more information, please visit www.ftvcapital.com.

Tier-one automotive supplier shortens cycle time, and improves standardized work adherence on assembly line it previously considered optimized.

Drishti Technologies Inc., whose AI-powered production technology uses video analytics, data and insights to bring significant benefits to manufacturers and their employees recently concluded a 10-week proof of concept deployment with global automotive supplier HELLA.

Prasad Akella, Drishti founder and CEO, tells IndustryWeek, with the success of the pilot, the group is moving forward with a broader integration. “The first and most direct integration is with the MES, as it immediately opens up the ability to conduct fast root cause analyses using the serial numbers of parts in question,” Akella says. Understandably, COVID-19 has presented unexpected challenges, explains Akella. For example, with frozen travel, Drishti was unable to conduct plant visits. “Therefore, we have developed a remote deployment option for customers that allows them to have the full benefit of Drishti without requiring us to travel and instead leveraging the deep in-house skills of the HELLA plant facilities team,” he says.

“Standardized work is the foundation of our assembly operations, and finding opportunities to improve adherence has the potential to significantly boost our productivity,” said Marcos Aurelio Alves Junior, operational excellence and industrial engineering manager at HELLA Mexico in a statement.

Alves and his team used the AI-generated data points in Drishti’s Portal to pinpoint statistical outliers, cycles that took significantly more or less time than the others. Because of the sheer volume of cycle time data Drishti provides, these outliers were clear indicators that attention was required.

Down to details

HELLA deployed 12 Drishti cameras on an automotive component assembly line in Guanajuato, Mexico. Because HELLA has established a lean philosophy throughout the organization since 2007, the selected assembly line was already a high-performing line in the company. HELLA was intrigued by Drishti’s AI-powered production solution and challenged the company to find opportunities for improvement, even though the line was already considered optimized based on state-of-the-art, non-AI lean methodologies.

Using Drishti Trace, which allows manufacturers to use live and recorded video to learn from what has happened, and Drishti Flow, which adds AI to provide assembly data that lets manufacturers closely monitor and rapidly improve performance, the HELLA team and Drishti jointly identified a number of potential improvements. In some instances, HELLA engineers were able to verify adherence to standardized work and implement improvements to the standardized work to reduce process delays and microstops.

“Drishti Trace lets anyone with access to the Portal go back in time and see exactly what happened on the factory floor,” said Alves. “It solves a number of questions about what happened in the past, making the process to identify deviations shorter and us more assertive in attacking the correct outliers in our histograms. And it’s particularly useful during the coronavirus because it doesn’t require our team to travel to the site to know what’s happening.”

At the conclusion of the 10-week deployment, HELLA saw a significant improvement in productivity on the assembly line. A broader Drishti deployment is currently in the works.

“Drishti’s technology uniquely provides us with information about what’s happening on the factory floor, now and in the past, wherever we are,” said Michael Hammoud, vice president of operations, HELLA said in a statement. “It helps us support our lean practices with data, and use the information we get from the cameras and AI to train our operators, improving their productivity and job satisfaction at the same time. It’s a win-win for the company and our employees.”

Constant improvement

The HELLA team believed the line was already optimized, so the team wasn’t confident that Drishti would uncover more opportunities, says Akella. “However, it soon became clear that several process steps on the line were inconsistent with standardized work, and those deviations were going undetected,” he says. “Despite the previously held belief that the line was optimized, Drishti shed light on further opportunities. Changing behavior on the line is not always easy, but Drishti’s video-backed proof points make it easier to get line associates on board.”

According to Akella, the success of this deployment demonstrates that there is almost always room for improvement. And, the best results come when companies remain open minded and ready to scale.

Open minded. Your industrial engineers have optimized your lines as best they can with yesterday’s technology. Newer technologies like Drishti can shed light on issues that weren’t previously obvious. It’s analogous to imaging your lungs using a stethoscope, an ultrasound scannerA and an MRI machine. The increasing capabilities of the devices give greater insights that lead to better diagnostics. The more open-minded the team is, the more use cases that are constructed and the greater the value from new technologies. Mindset is critical.

Ready to scale.  When you decide to make the investment to test new technologies, assume success and be ready to get your CFO’s approval for the broader roll out. Otherwise, you’ve invested significant resources and have no path to scale the benefits across the organization.