Druva secured a $147 million investment in its eighth funding round today, pushing the cloud data protection and backup startup's valuation to more than $2 billion. 

Now a unicorn two-times over, the Sunnyvale, California-based firm has secured $475 million in total venture backing. And for good reason: Cloud-based data protection, backup, and disaster recovery software and services are hot – red hot. Look at competitor Cohesity for example, which is now valued at $3.7 billion, up from $2.5 billion last year, according to Bloomberg. 

Taking the titanic amount of data being generated daily into consideration, enterprises are managing nearly 40% more data than a year ago, while the estimated total cost of data loss has increased to more than $1 million per organization, according to Gartner. 

The fact that cybercrime skyrocketed last year as COVID-19 and the shift to virtual work and learning swept the globe doesn’t bode well for 2021. It also means that organizations need to take a new approach to securing their data. The pressure is on for IT teams looking to store, secure, and manage data in a way that can be easily accessed with speed and consistency.

This bodes well for Druva, whose cloud platform provides consumption-based pricing for protection of software-as-a-service (SaaS) applications such as Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, and Salesforce. The vendor said adoption of Druva Cloud Platform products saw a 50% jump in 2020, and the company’s data under management grew by more than 40%.

Druva’s Next Move

The funding announcement comes on the heels of a new collaboration with Dell Technologies to tackle the data protection gap in popular cloud-based application platforms. The Dell EMC PowerProtect Backup Service packs Druva’s cloud-based backup platform that includes disaster recovery, archiving, analytics, and visibility across environments. 

As for future moves, in a 2019 interview with SDxCentral, Druva CEO Jaspreet Singh said an initial public offering (IPO) is likely in the company’s future. 

“We feel a public offering is likely Druva’s most appropriate course, but we are focused on continuing our global expansion and supporting customers as they prepare for the cloud era given the rapid market growth,” he said. “We will monitor industry conditions and make decisions based on what best positions Druva for future growth and success.”

Druva has yet to respond to SDxCentral’s request for comment on an update to its IPO plans.