Clumio CEO On How New $75M Funding Will Spur Growth Across Public Clouds

‘Our customer base today is on AWS, and we have tons of asks in terms of supporting more and more workloads on AWS. At the same time, as more and more enterprises are going multi-cloud, there is definitely a lot of appetite in terms of a single solution that can essentially protect their workloads across public clouds. And so our future development in is both these directions,’ says Clumio CEO Poojan Kumar.

Closing A Funding Round Worth $75 Million, With More To Come

Data protection software developer Clumio Wednesday closed a funding round worth $75 million that brought the total investment in the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company to $261 million.

The round, led by Sutter Hill Ventures, included new funds from two other existing investors, Index Ventures and Altimeter Capital, as well from a new investor, NewView Capital.

For now, Clumio has yet to become profitable, or even cashflow positive. However, Clumio CEO Poojan Kumar told CRN that profitability for now is not the point. Instead, he said, the company’s focus is on growth.

“If you look at what we have done so far and what our ambitions are at the end of the day, we are strong believers in building an independent company that focuses on public cloud backup workloads,” Kumar said. “And we're just getting started here with the depth and breadth we have on AWS, and we have tons to go into. So the round of financing is really to go accelerate our go-to-market as well as accelerate our R&D and innovation on protecting public cloud workloads.”

And while Clumio is focused on growing its business, it is also focused on protection data for workloads that are deployed on public clouds. For now, the company’s technology is tied to Amazon Web Services, and an expansion to Google Cloud Platform and Microsoft Azure applications is on the way, but don’t expect Clumio to work with on-premises workload data, Kumar said.

“When we started the company … we wanted to do hybrid, we wanted to do on-prem and cloud and all of those things,” he said. “But we decided to focus on the public cloud because what we came across more and more were people moving their workloads into the cloud. What they were looking for on the public cloud is not something that you can essentially retrofit for on-prem workloads. It's just two different architectures.”

Kumar had a lot to say about the cloud, data protection, and Clumio’s strategic priorities. He also discussed why the acquisition of Veritas by fellow data protection vendor Cohesity was actually a good idea and a move that really doesn’t impact his company.

Define Clumio. How do you describe the company?

We were basically set up with the mission of becoming the public cloud backup company. Today, we do AWS. But our vision essentially is to build a backup platform across any workload in any public cloud.

So when you say initially working with AWS, you're talking about backing up workloads that are running on AWS?

Natively built on the cloud. So we basically back up any AWS workload today that we support at the end of the day on AWS.

Will future development focus primarily on other hyperscale cloud providers like Google and Azure, or are you also developing for non-public cloud workloads?

Primarily public cloud. Our customer base today is on AWS, and we have tons of asks in terms of supporting more and more workloads on AWS. At the same time, as more and more enterprises are going multi-cloud, there is definitely a lot of appetite in terms of a single solution that can essentially protect their workloads across public clouds. And so our future development in is both these directions.

How about for on-premises workloads?

No, we're leaving that for the tons of on-prem players that exist in the market today. On-prem is not something that we are focused on at all. That's something for all the legacy players, like Rubrik and Cohesity and Veritas.

Many if not most businesses use hybrid cloud data protection where some data is in the cloud, some is on-prem, and some is on the edge. The data could be anywhere. By focusing specifically on cloud workloads, doesn't Clumio limit itself in terms of potential market?

I think we've learned this firsthand. When we started the company, it was very similar to what you just mentioned. We wanted to do hybrid, we wanted to do on-prem and cloud and all of those things. But we decided to focus on the public cloud because what we came across more and more were people moving their workloads into the cloud. What they were looking for on the public cloud is not something that you can essentially retrofit for on-prem workloads. It's just two different architectures. Very different. A lot of times two different teams. And the kind of things you're using in the cloud, such as S3, DynamoDB, and RDS, it’s just a very different slew of solutions. The way the application is built, multi-region, multi-account, and so on and so forth. So while in theory you might want to call yourself hybrid, and try to be hybrid, the reality is, it’s just very different architectures. So by focusing on the public cloud, we have built a really compelling solution for the public cloud. And hence I do not believe in hybrid. It’s two different things.

Earlier, when talking about on-prem data protection, two of the three vendors you named, Cohesity and Veritas, will become one company some time this year.

That's why I mentioned them together.

Cohesity’s planned acquisition of Veritas is pretty big news in the data protection space. What kind of impact do you expect on this market space in general, and on Clumio specifically?

That's a great question. But first, I like to break the backup landscape up into three different buckets. There is the on-prem workload, the public cloud workload, and the SaaS workloads like Salesforce, Workday, and ServiceNow. The Cohesity-Veritas deal, I think it's a very interesting move, an awesome move on part of Cohesity to do this. But the big impact it has is to the on-prem players like Commvault, Veeam, and Rubrik. I think there is a very interesting impact to them. The combination of those two players can put a real dent in some of the growth of the on-prem players.

For us in the public cloud, we really never see any of those players. I fundamentally believe the public cloud market is going to be the largest market in the next few years. And so for us, there's been like zero impact from those two companies coming together. I would say, if there was any ambition either of those companies had, in theory, to go and do something in the public cloud, I think even that is gone, because now they're going to double-down and triple-down on prem at this point. So we’ve seen zero impact, and I expect to see zero impact.

Clumio just unveiled a big D round of funding of $75 million. That brings total funding in the company now to $261 million. Did you need that D round of funding? In other words, was it important for growth going forward, just a case of being ready for other things?

Absolutely, we needed the round of funding because we're just getting started here. If you look at what we have done so far and what our ambitions are at the end of the day, we are strong believers in building an independent company that focuses on public cloud backup workloads. And we're just getting started here with the depth and breadth we have on AWS, and we have tons to go into. So the round of financing is really to go accelerate our go-to-market as well as accelerate our R&D and innovation on protecting public cloud workloads.

Do you think Clumio will need further rounds of funding going forward?

Absolutely. Obviously, there's a macroeconomic backdrop that we have to work with at the end of the day. But absolutely, our goal essentially is to use this capital to get to the next stage in terms of both our platform as well as go-to-market, and then raise an even bigger round of financing in the next couple of years. And there's tons of appetite in the in the market. Also, I've talked to tons of investors in this space, and we don't get compared to anybody else at the end of the day. And so there's so much appetite in terms of investing in the next Snowflake-equivalent or Datadog-equivalent for public cloud backup. And that's what we're basically setting out to do.

How far is away from profitability or cashflow positive is Clumio?

That's something we are working on. I wouldn't say that it happens over the next couple years. We'll definitely need one more round of financing to go and achieve that outcome. And again, that's not one of our goals in any case, but given the overall market it is something that we are keeping our eyes on. It's not just about growing. It's about growing responsibly.

What are your strategic priorities for 2024?

You’ll hear a lot about the company as the year progresses. I'll probably bucket that into three different categories. One is, we talked about increasing our go-to-market footprint. Number two is invest. From a channel perspective, we recently made a big hire in bringing Rohan Thomas [as head of cloud alliances] from AWS to double down in terms of our partnerships, both with the public cloud vendors and the channel ecosystem. So that's a big priority for this year. And then just continuing the pace of innovation that we have had in the last three years. We basically want to keep growing the overall footprint in terms of our services launched both in AWS and in multi-cloud environments.

So what comes next, Google Cloud Platform or Azure?

Stay tuned for that. That's something you will hear about from us very soon. This is the year when we're going to make a ton of announcements.

In regards to hybrid clouds, while we are not believers in hybrid, we are fundamental believers in the fact that in the cloud all kinds of workloads will exist. People will lift and shift a bunch of stuff in the cloud so that it looks like on-prem but it's running in the cloud. And then people will build new applications in the public cloud. But for both these workloads, a true cloud-native architecture is required that transparently runs as a service across any region, around the globe, across hundreds of accounts in the public cloud. So we are definitely set out to go and support our customers in the public cloud irrespective of whether their workload comes to the cloud in a lift and shift or is natively built in the public cloud.