Automation Anywhere raises $250 M in Series-A funding, gets unicorn status

Automation Anywhere, a robotic process automation company, which operates globally with over 1,000 clients, has presence at three locations in India.

Automation Anywhere, a Robotic Process Automation (RPA) company founded by Ankur Kothari, Mihir Shukla, Neeti Mehta, and Rushabh Parmani, based in San Jose, California, has raised $250 million in Series-A funding round, taking the value of the company to $1.8 billion.

The $250-million funding round was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and Goldman Sachs Growth Equity with participation from General Atlantic and World Innovation Lab (WiL).

According to the company, “this sizable investment will help extend Automation Anywhere’s leadership in the rapidly-expanding RPA market and accelerate its global customer engagements and product development.”

Automation Anywhere, which is present globally, has its presence at three locations in India – Bengaluru, Mumbai and Baroda. It was founded in 2003 and rebranded itself as Automation Anywhere in 2010.

With this investment, Automation Anywhere expects to deepen its customer engagements in North America, LATAM, India, Europe, Australia, Japan, South Korea and Singapore (ASEAN), and plans to deploy its technology in additional geographies.

RPA is a fast-evolving technology that uses software robots (bots) to automate business processes that have never been automated by traditional technology platforms. Automation Anywhere pioneered RPA and its Intelligent Digital Workforce Platform, which also combines cognitive automation and analytics, is driving productivity and business process accuracy with near-zero error rates.

“Customers tell us that traditional process automation technologies are capable of automating only about 20 percent of an enterprise’s business processes. We believe our Intelligent Digital Workforce Platform can automate up to 80 percent of these processes. It’s a stark contrast and an enormous opportunity,” said Mihir Shukla, CEO and Co-Founder of Automation Anywhere.

According to Automation Anywhere, its total revenue continues to grow over 100 percent annually while the existing customer revenue grew more than 150 percent year-over-year ended March, 2018.

The company has managed a customer retention rate of 98 percent and claimed that it has one of the highest tech industry net promoter score. Among its customers are companies such as Google, Cisco, Tesco, Whirlpool, Rabobank etc.

“With this investment, we are poised to extend our leadership in the multibillion-dollar RPA market,” said Clyde Hosein, CFO of Automation Anywhere.

Automation Anywhere also opened its bot store marketplace in March 2018 consisting of hundreds of pre-built bots for more commonly used business processes, delivering drag-n-drop ease and immediacy with very little development required.

“Automation Anywhere has demonstrated tremendous progress within the RPA landscape,” said Scott Sandell, Managing General Partner of NEA, adding, “This funding allows the company to accelerate global expansion and advance its product roadmap.”

“With more than 1,000 global customers, Automation Anywhere is the leader in the RPA space and we are pleased to join them in their next phase of expansion,” said John Giannuzzi, a Vice President in Goldman Sachs’ Merchant Banking Division.