Rubrik CEO expects to go public within three years following $180m funding

Bipul Sinha lifts lid on his plans in interview with CRN sister publication Channelnomics Europe

Cloud data management unicorn Rubrik has secured $180m in series D funding, which CEO Bipul Sinha claims will be ploughed into beefing up its R&D team and hiring sales and support staff across Europe and Asia.

Founded in 2013, the firm recently landed $180m (€164.96m) in series D funding at a $1.3bn valuation led by new investor IVP and existing investors Lightspeed Venture Partners and Greylock Partners. The latest funding round follows a $61m series C round raised in August last year.

The CEO (pictured) said that he "hasn't even touched" the $61m raised at series C, but claims the new funding will enable the firm to bolster its R&D and go-to-market capabilities.

"Our plan is to take the company public. We expect to go public probably in two or three years but that is not the end goal for the company; it is just a big milestone on the journey to becoming a self-sustaining company that continues to last."

Putting feet on the ground Sinha said the money will be used to boost the firm's headcount from a present day 330 to 550 by the end of the year. The CEO said the firm will continue to hire between 70 and 90 people each quarter.

The recruitment drive will include tripling Rubrik's engineering team over an 18-month period, with the aim of releasing a series of new products over the coming years.

"Our plan is to continue to innovate at a very rapid pace and create the standard in multi-cloud and hybrid cloud for enterprises," he said.

"Our focus will continue being on the cloud to make it easier for customers to adopt and make the economics of cloud really attractive for large enterprise customers. [Our next product is]... four to six months away, depending on the complexity of the products and features we are dealing with."

Rubrik has only been selling for the last six quarters, according to Sinha, but has hit an annual revenue run-rate of $100m.

Sinha also said he plans to hire sales and support staff in a bid to boost Rubrik's market presence in Europe and Asia in particular. The firm employs 50 people in Europe today, but plans to push the continent's headcount to between 75 and 100 within the next nine to 12 months.

"We have presence in 13 western European cities, big cities, from France to Germany to the Nordics and Italy and Spain, so we will be growing very aggressively and this funding gives us an opportunity to engage our channel partners- because we are a 100 per cent channel company - as well as double down on customer support and our sales team," he said.

Going mainstream The firm has a partner base of 225 to 250 resellers and distributors, according to Sinha. He said that although there are plans to boost sales and support staff to aid Rubrik's partners, signing on more channel players is not a priority.

"Growing our partner base is not our main goal. Our main goal is working with a select group of partners and making them successful," he said.

Sinha said that his firm is now considered a "mainstream" player among its channel community, claiming that its partners are generally increasing their the amount of business they do with Rubrik as they leave incumbents on the shelf.

"We are now a fast-growing company, so our access to a broader set of partners has definitely increased many-fold, and partners are now looking at us as a mainstream player. During our growth and penetration we have had recognition that Rubrik is a company that is going to continue to innovate, and there is a broad acceptance of Rubrik in the channel partner community," he said.

"If you look at the architecture of data management and backup, the architecture has not changed since 1990, and people have been only doing very small incremental updates. If you think about what is going on with cloud virtualisation, flash, everything that is going on, it is a completely untouched field for data management; it is really an undersold market where incumbents took their customers for a ride."

He added: "Then if you look at cloud with… Azure and AWS, these platforms are starting to get broad acceptance in the enterprise. If you look at these two sides, a lack of innovation in the market, and the broad acceptance of public cloud, there is an opportunity to combine the two and create a single data-management fabric for hybrid cloud and multi-cloud enterprises."

Sinha said that he will look to take the company public in two or three years' time, but sustainability remains the real end-goal for Rubrik.

"Our plan is to take the company public. We expect to go public probably in two or three years but that is not the end goal for the company; it is just a big milestone on the journey to becoming a self-sustaining company that continues to last. We want the company to become an important player; we want to be around in the next 20 to 40 years," he said.