Canva today announces a new valuation of US$6 billion from US$3.2 billion, after having raised a US$60 million round.
The doubling in valuation is attributed to Canva’s growing prominence as a workplace collaboration platform fueled by its strong performance in user growth, which continues to accelerate as the world shifts online amidst the global pandemic. Today Canva is embraced by over 30 million people every month to design around the globe, collaborating on presentations, marketing materials, social media content, videos and more -- at a whopping 80 designs per second and a total over 3 billion designs created since launch.
Canva cofounder and COO Cliff Obrecht said despite the economic downturn as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, the company continues to see a significant increase in user activity.
“Canva’s accelerated growth is indicative of the “new normal”, as more teams realize the need for a more scalable, more collaborative, more affordable and more user-friendly design platform.
“Now more than ever, organizations of all sizes are doubling down on building a reliable remote workplace, and are turning to modern productivity platforms like Canva to ensure they remain flexible and scalable.”
Investor Rick Baker from Blackbird, a renowned venture capital firm based in Australia said the surge in Canva’s numbers is a testament to the design platform’s abilities to cater to the changing needs of the modern workplace.
“This round is further evidence that Canva continues to power ahead. In a post-COVID world of remote working, we are seeing Canva’s original vision - a collaborative platform to provide all the elements to create great design - become even more powerful. As a result, Canva has seen phenomenal growth over the past months, cementing its place as one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies in the world.”
Mood Rowghani, general partner at Bond adds, "The recent changes in our world have pressured organizations to embrace new methods of work and collaboration. As the lines between home and office have blurred, Canva's digital design platform is empowering a new wave of productivity and interaction for businesses, schools, and nonprofits across the globe. We have been thrilled to work with the team and are excited about what's to come."
Canva affirms its spot as a powerful workplace collaboration suite
Since launch in late 2019, Canva is the collaboration platform of choice for a number of large organizations to mobilize its workforce to create on brand content.
● More than 500,000 organizations on the platform from Small Businesses to Enterprises such as Warner Music, American Airlines, Ingram Micro, and Eaton
● With more than 90,000 schools and universities worldwide such as the NSW Department of Education in Australia and Georgetown University
● As well as over 55,000 nonprofits such as the World Health Organization, Task Force for Global Health, NHS Charities Together and UN Commission on Human Rights.
Skyscanner, the travel search engine that serves 100 million monthly global users, has used Canva to roll out a full rebrand across 36 markets ― all within six months.
Skyscanner Senior Design Manager, Judson Cowan said, “The time saved for our design and marketing teams was immense. Canva has allowed us to simultaneously adopt our re-brand across all regions, regardless of timezone, or access to designers. The result was an on-time and well received brand launch, which is rare for large businesses.”
As people continue to collaborate online, design creation and sharing on Canva has increased by over 50% since the start of COVID-19. The company will also be rolling out a number of new workplace collaboration features designed to help teams of all sizes work together, through effective visual communication:
● Canva’s Real-time Collaboration brings teamwork to life by letting users work on designs simultaneously.
● Canva Brainstorms is a new design type built for teams to collaborate simultaneously on notes, build moodboards and flesh out ideas using an infinite canvas space.
● Canva Talking Presentations brings a new way to create engaging presentations by allowing presenters to talk through their slides in an interactive format.
● Canva for Desktop offers a seamless desktop experience, paving the way for offline editing and other native features by the end of the year.
Cementing Canva’s presence in the US and beyond
As a key growth market for Canva, the company is investing in its US operations with the opening of an office in Austin, Texas.
The US team will provide strategic support for enterprise clients and nonprofits as the country navigates the “new normal” workplace together, kicking off with its inaugural online Enterprise conference on July 29, Elevate 2020. The conference will feature a keynote from Canva CEO and cofounder, Melanie Perkins, as well as customer panels with HubSpot, Berkshire Hathaway Home Services and IDC Global, to name a few.
When it comes to furthering international growth, Canva is also open to considering acquisitions whereby it invests in companies for their world-class engineering and product teams.
Cliff explains, “We’re open to investment opportunities in the media and editing space as we continue on our mission to provide a comprehensive and valuable product.
“Ultimately, we want Canva to be the go-to platform for all your design needs, so we’ll continue to monitor and evaluate acquisition opportunities.”
For the latest product news, visit https://www.canva.com/whats-new/
