Premji Invest backs California-based enterprise Co Zuora

BENGALURU: Premji Invest, the family office of Wipro Chairman Azim Premji has backed California-based Zuora which offers subscription billing, commerce and financial solutions to companies across various industries including media, travel services, consumer packaged goods, cloud services, and telecommunications. Premji Invest was joined in the deal by public-market investors Wellington Management, BlackRock, Passport Capital and existing investors Benchmark Capital, Greylock Partners, Redpoint Ventures, Index Ventures, Shasta Ventures, Vulcan Capital, Next World Capital, Workday Cofounder Dave Duffield and Salesforce Chairman & CEO Marc Benioff.

The round was led by BlackRock, Passport Capital and Marc Benioff in which Zuora has raised $115 million, bringing the total amount of capital raised by the company to $250 million. Zuora had last raised $50 million from investors like Vulcan Capital, Greylock Partners, Index Ventures and Redpoint Ventures in September 2013.

Founded in 2007, Zuora provides a relationship business management platform to companies enabling them to manage the entire subscriber lifecycle including customer acquisition, recurring billing and payments, revenue recognition and subscription metrics.

With this new investment, the company plans to enter new geographies and vertical markets, improve its research and development activities and strengthen its sales, engineering and marketing team. Zuora says that it has expanded its global workforce to 500 employees in the past year and opened eight new offices worldwide.Some of its clients include Financial Times, Schneider Electric, Box, Honeywell, NCR, RTL, Lynda.com, The Guardian, YP.com, BlueJeans, Shutterfly, TripAdvisor, Vivint and Trulia.

This investment comes on the heels of competitor Chargebee picking up $5 million from Tiger Global & Accel Partners.