Vertex Ventures US leads $9.9 mn Series A round in tech startup Hasura

San Francisco and Bengaluru headquartered software services provider Hasura Technologies has raised $9.9 million in a Series A round led by venture capital firm Vertex Ventures US. 

Other participants in the round included SAP.iO, an early-stage investment arm of German technology major SAP and returning investors such as venture capital firm Nexus Venture Partners and Tokyo-based early-stage investor Strive, the company said in a statement. 

Angel investors such as James Tamplin, founder of mobile app development platform Firebase; Sam Lambert, VP at Microsoft’s software making arm GitHub; Amod Malvia, co-founder of B2B e-commerce marketplace Udaan and Michael Stoppelman, former executive at business directory platform Yelp, also pitched in. 

Hasura has so far raised $11.5 million, as per TechCircle estimates. In 2018, it raised $1.6 million in a seed round led by Nexus Venture Partners along with Strive, formerly known as GREE Ventures.

Founded in 2016 by IIT Madras graduate Tanmai Gopal and Stanford University Graduate School of Business alumni Rajoshi Ghosh, Hasura uses open-source software to provide easy data access to application programme interface (API) users and app developers. 

The company uses solutions such as data query software GraphQL, which is developed by Facebook; container tracking platform Kubernetes, developed by Google and recently inducted database management software PostgresQL. Hasura claims its platform has over 28 million downloads and 15,000 GitHub stars.   

Hasura counts several global enterprises, including Spanish bank BBVA, Illinois-based media company Propublica, boutique design firm Delicious Simplicity, real estate firm Cherre, software maker Crayon, Boeing arm Jeppersen as its customers. 

With this funding, Hasura will invest in engineering and product development and increase hiring in sales positions. 

“While we double down on the Postgres ecosystem, these funds will help us bring the Hasura and GraphQL experience to other databases to mobilize data in organizations by making high-performance and secure data access a reality,” Gopal, co-founder and CEO of Hasura said. 

Palo Alto and San Francisco-based  Vertex Ventures US has assets under management worth $700 million and has so far invested in 40 startups. Backed by Singapore government’s investment firm Temasek Holdings, Vertex’s India portfolio comprises logistics firm Xpressbees, fresh meat supplier Licious, travel aggregation platform Yatra and fintech firm Kissht. 

SAP.iO Fund provides seed and Series A capital to startups in the technology domain along with technical and sales support through its incubator programmes such as SAP.iO Foundries and SAP.iO Venture Studio. It has 175 startups in its portfolio. Bangalore-based artificial intelligence chatbot Niki.ai is one of its investee startups.