Big Kyligence Apache Kylin Ebay Shanghai: Kyligence, a startup that offers Big Data analytics and solutions for large enterprises, has raised $70 million in its latest round of funding, the company announced this week. The financing will help Kyligence accelerate growth in China and North America markets. It comes just two years after Kyligence was founded by by two former Google senior engineers who created Apache Kylin at eBay Inc., which sought to help it sell more products online.
Kyligence was founded by the team that developed Apache Kylin, which won eBay’s 2013 Global Innovation Award. Kylin is an open source software project focused on large-scale data processing and analysis.
“We’re very excited to announce our new $70 million round of funding,” said Jonathan Heilbron, chief executive officer of Kyligence. “This round brings Kyligence to a total capital raise of $118 million as we continue to build momentum across our business globally. The vast majority of the funding will be used to further invest in our sales and engineering teams.”
Kyligence raised its latest round from investors including General Atlantic and Bessemer Venture Partners. It has also received investments from notable investors such as eBay, Quark Ventures, Accel Partners, Lightspeed Venture Partners and Softbank Capital.
“This new funding will allow us to continue building a world-class team that can help drive the next wave of digital transformation,” continued Heilbron. “We’re focusing on growing our customer base in the financial services and Internet of Things (IoT) markets. We are also building a strong presence in China with a clear focus on the banking and insurance verticals.”
Founded in 2013, Kyligence was incubated by Alibaba Group. The company’s client base includes Alibaba, Baidu and Ping An Insurance.
In addition to Kyligence, eBay also has a team of former Google engineers based in Shanghai. The company acquired one of these groups, named Kylin Inc., for an undisclosed sum in 2014. That team is currently focused on developing smart technologies to help develop more innovative payment services for its merchants globally. It’s possible that Kylin Inc.’s engineers may have joined eBay’s Shanghai team recently as it expands into new markets such as China and the U.S.
According to Heilbron, Kyligence is seeing significant growth in its Asia Pacific and North American markets. This includes an 11-fold increase of annual recurring revenue (ARR), which saw a 50 percent year-over-year increase in the quarter ended March 31, 2016.
Kyligence’s client count has also expanded significantly. It’s now serving customers in more than 100 countries, and has the potential to expand to 140 countries. Kyligence also added three new clients in its business process outsourcing service last quarter.
“In China, we’re focusing on growing our presence with financial services and IoT verticals,” said Heilbron. “We already have about 50 percent share of the banking and insurance vertical for companies that are processing millions of transactions a day. IoT has seen a lot of growth in China recently and we’re in a very good position to capitalize on this. For example, Alibaba is using us for their Aliyun OS, which is the most widely used operating system for IoT devices.”
The company also recently expanded into North America with a new office in San Francisco. It currently has five employees in the office that are focused on growing its business in the U.S.
