PremjiInvest leads $90M funding round in US-based cloud venture Anaplan

PremjiInvest, the private investment firm of Wipro Ltd chairman Azim Premji, has led a $90 million (around Rs 607 crore) Series E funding round in US-based Anaplan Inc, which runs a suite of cloud-based financial planning apps for enterprises.

Baillie Gifford, Founders Circle Capital, Harmony Partners and Anaplan's current investors also put money in this round, Anaplan said in a statement.

The funds raised will be used for customer acquisition and product development.

According to The Wall Street Journal, Anaplan is now a unicorn as the funding round values the company at $1.09 billion.

"Anaplan is a game changer because it enables companies to not only make processes faster and easier, but also fundamentally change the way their people work and make decisions," said Sandesh Patnam, partner and lead US investor, PremjiInvest.

The company has raised $240 million in external funding till date and plans to float an IPO soon. Anaplan also announced the appointment of former Genesys CFO James Budge as its finance head.

"We now have an outstanding finance executive on our team to guide our continued growth," said Fred Laluyaux, CEO & president of Anaplan.

Founded in 2006 by Guy Haddleton and Michael Gould, Anaplan is a cloud-based business enterprise software and planning platform for sales, operations and finance based in San Francisco. The company has over 200 pre-built products from which customers can choose. They also have the option of getting a custom made app. The company claims to have more than 400 customers till date and counts HP, Aviva, Procter & Gamble, McAfee, GE Healthcare and Motorola among its customers.

Founded in 2008, Bangalore-based PremjiInvest, which is the family office of Wipro Group chairman Azim Premji, is a private equity firm with $1 billion assets under management. It invests in both private and public equity of companies operating in India as well as outside it. This is not the first time PremjiInvest has led big-ticket investments in startups based in the US.

In August last year, PremjiInvest led a $82 million series F investment round in California ServiceMax Inc, which provides cloud-based field service management solutions.

In March last year, it led a Series C investment round in Silicon Valley-based Cyanogen Inc, a leading mobile operating system (OS) developer which customises Google's Android OS for its clients.

In the same month, PremjiInvest participated in a Series C funding round in California-based Zuora Inc, which runs a software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based subscription billing and financial solutions venture.