The funding was led by Matrix Partners, and included participation from existing investors Atlas Venture and Benchmark Capital. In addition, Timothy Barrows, general partner of Matrix Partners, joined Kalido’s board of directors. The new funding will be used to add staff to its three US offices, as well as for R&D purposes, mainly to enhance its master data management capability.
Kalido, which was spun-off as an independent software company from an internal data warehousing project at Royal Dutch Shell, has been making an aggressive push into the North American market over the past year with some success.
It has a total of 24 customers globally, 11 of which are located in North America. While this may seem a modest number, most of its deals are global, multi-site contracts that often run into the million dollar-plus range, a testament to its strong data warehousing heritage that can be traced back to Shell.
Speaking to ComputerWire, CEO Bob Potter confirmed that two-thirds of potential sales in the pipeline are located in the North America market. He sees the funding as the company’s last round of private equity financing, and confirmed that Kalido is talking about a possible IPO, but has placed no timeline on a listing.
One of the main reasons for the funding was to improve the balance sheet, as our system is such a strategic purchase for our clients Potter said. The funding gives us the flexibility to spend if we want to. That said, we don’t need the cash and we expect to be cash positive in the second half of 2004.
Kalido has dual headquarters in Burlington, Massachusetts and London, UK. It employs approximately 84 staff, and in 2003 reported revenue of $9.4m, up from $5.7m in 2002. The company hopes to grow this by 50% to 75% during the current fiscal year. To date, Kalido has raised $30m in financing.
