Keepit has secured $40 million in refinancing from HSBC Innovation Banking. The package was agreed in partnership with The Export and Investment Fund of Denmark (EIFO). The company says the available capital will be used for expansion and product development.
Morten Felsvang, CEO and co-founder at Keepit commented, “We are very proud to have the continued backing of HSBC Innovation Banking. This refinancing is a long-term commitment – it not only strengthens our capital structure but is an infusion of confidence in our capabilities on all levels. And it means that we can continue our growth strategy at full throttle.”
This is the fourth time that Keepit has sought finance. In 2012 it received $615k in seed money. 2020 saw a successful Series A funding round that raised $30 million and was led by One Peak. In 2022, it refinanced its debt with a $22.5 million deal led by SVB (now HSBC Innovation Banking), and today, it has secured $40 million in its latest refinancing package.
In its press release, Keepit says, “The new funding frees up capital for further investments in international expansion, hiring, business operations, and product development as Keepit continues to scale and build out its market-leading platform for SaaS data protection.”
Who is Keepit?
Keepit describes itself as delivering next-level data protection. It says, “We own and operate a vendor-independent cloud to provide next-level SaaS data protection. We offer all-inclusive, secure, and reliable backup and recovery services for your data.” The company operates 10 data centres across the US, Canada, Germany, Denmark and the UK.
One of the challenges with SaaS applications is data spread across multiple apps. It makes backup and restore challenging and leaves many organisations with gaps in their data protection strategy. It also creates risk in terms of product updates and patching, where data can be exposed inadvertently.
Keepit positions itself as a single secure data store that is integrated with the most popular SaaS applications. It has services for Microsoft 365, Azure AD, Google Workspace, Dynamics 365, Salesforce, Zendesk and others. It backs up the data from those SaaS apps and stores it securely in its object storage. That object store, according to Keepit, “prohibits the deletion of any data object or backup set — giving you peace of mind that your data will stay safe.”
The company also says that it meets a number of regulatory compliance standards, especially around security. Importantly, it allows organisations to add Right to be Forgotten (RTBF) labels to data. Something that few data systems openly support and something that can be hard to do.
Enterprise Times: What does this mean?
Keepit is quietly going about its business in the backup, restore and data security market. It has built out its cloud over a number of years, and with 10 data centres across North America and Europe, it is well positioned to support its current customer base.
What is less clear is how it will expand that reach to be a truly global player. Will it use this money to expand into the Asia-Pacific region or India? Even if the full $40 million is available, it doesn’t go far when you are building out global data centres, and for SaaS apps, location is key.
Its support for SaaS products is also limited. It is currently focused on Google, Microsoft, Salesforce and Zendesk. Will it now look to support other fast-growing SaaS providers such as Zoho? Keepit also says that it will use some of the money to hire new staff, but will this be in sales, marketing or development?
All of these areas above can easily eat up the $40 million it has received, and that is before the question of how much is required to cover existing debt requirements. It will be interesting to see what Keepit does now it has the money.
