Keboola Announces $4.5M Seed Round to Help Every Business Unlock the Potential of Data
PRAGUE, Czech Republic, November 22, 2022 — Keboola, the data platform-as-a-service startup, has closed a $4.5 million seed funding round led by Presto Ventures. The round included Reflex Capital, the VC fund of Mall Group founder Ondřej Fryc, as well as a number of prominent angel investors, including Eduard Kučera, founder of Avast, and Tomáš Čupr, founder of Rohlik Group.
Until the current round of funding, Keboola has been entirely self-funded, having been officially founded in 2017 after nearly a decade in bootstrap mode. Keboola is on track to achieve an annual subscription revenue (or ARR) of more than $8 million by 2022.
Initially limited to the largest enterprises, the desire to harness data has now reached the point where a wide range of businesses – even SMEs – want to harness data insights, automate data processes and build apps to unlock the value of data. However, industry analysts consistently note that most businesses are struggling. Gartner believes that 80% of organizations will fail to scale digital business because of outdated approaches to data and analytics. A core barrier to progress is the cost of integrating expensive technical teams within specific business departments. Turning business intelligence into a product is an approach that McKinsey research indicates can reduce processing time by as much as 90%. But data management and infrastructure have traditionally been difficult and expensive.
Keboola’s platform addresses the challenges of complexity and cost that currently hold DataOps back. It delivers an end-to-end infrastructure for businesses of all sizes, with a front-end that can be operated by any non-technical business user and back-end API integrations for developers. By integrating the entire data stack and automating all infrastructure operations, Keboola reduces maintenance and management friction and allows organizations to focus fully on turning data into business intelligence and new products. Data engineers are provided with a full-stack, open-source platform that they can easily customize. Business users get a user-friendly interface without code. Keboola brings popular tools from the modern data stack such as dbt, Apache Spark, MLflow, OpenLineage, Jupyter and Hightouch under one roof, with a single interface wired for business management.
Pavel Doležal, co-founder and CEO of Keboola, said: “We believe in the potential of data and AI to fundamentally transform any business. But this requires tons of time and money to build and maintain infrastructure. Today, only Amazon, Google and a handful of other companies that are really able to make the most of their data. We want to unlock the data opportunity for everyone else.”
Keboola’s fully scalable platform is built on Snowflake, which recommends Keboola as a self-service BI platform in the ‘Powered by Snowflake’ program. In addition, Keboola offers enterprise-class security and management. The platform is completely open, allowing external app integration and flexible coding language options. These capabilities enable broad customization options, with the ability for organizations to write their own code and components, including machine learning algorithms.
“The priority is to help clients turn data into money. Our platform approach removes infrastructure from the equation and puts the focus on the data. The result is a solution that is like a luxury car with every imaginable option available and the best possible engine in Snowflake. We are strong influenced by our belief in transparency and data masking principles, Doležal said.
The company will use the money to speed up growth in Europe and North America. It currently counts the likes of RBI (restaurants), DXC, ProductBoard, Mall Group and Rohlik Group among its clients, in fields as diverse as retail, e-commerce, marketing, financial services and hospitality. Keboola expects to at least double its revenue by 2023.
Use cases include more accurate sales forecasting, automating supply chain logistics, and accelerating product and feature development. Mall Group, the leading e-commerce group in Central Europe, has reversed a years-long data analytics backlog and is able to produce 400+ data products and functions per year. Sports retailer Sportissimo has achieved a 5% increase in revenue by providing 12 million next-day sales forecasts daily for over 38,000 products in five countries, leading to significant reductions in out-of-stocks and more accurate, automated supply chain logistics for 190 retailers. shops.
Přemysl Rubeš, founder of lead investor Presto Ventures, said: “The Keboola team has been ahead of its time with its product. They have done an amazing job of scaling the company organically and making Keboola a cult company in the data analytics and business intelligence community . We are pleased to support them to accelerate this growth and win in a global market predicted to reach $655 billion by 2029.”
About Keboola
Keboola is a computing platform as a service built on top of Snowflake that enables customers to accelerate their computing projects. Keboola believes in empowering everyone to make data-driven decisions. Together with Snowflake, it provides a unique solution for any data-driven company. From small companies to enterprises, worldwide and all segments. Based in Prague with external teams around the world, Keboola was founded in 2017 and has raised $4.5 million to date, with investments from Presto Ventures and several prominent angel investors.
Source: Keboola
