How Druva CEO Jaspreet Singh grew Druva to $304.3M revenue and 6K customers in 2024.

great to see you good to be here thank you joe i appreciate you taking some time and tim great to see you as well thank you for your time likewise joe happy to be here i have questions for both of you but just breathe i think i'll start with you um you know the cloud data protection market on the one hand it's quite crowded and listen i'm a blogger i'm not a deeply technical guy so sometimes i'm not clear on what makes one company or one technology unique compared to another so what does make druva unique what makes you stand out from the crowd in this market absolutely so there's a lot of cloud washing right now in the market everybody wants to be you know the best friend of the cloud providers but uh think about we don't think of cloud as just a technology or an integration it's more a business model shift uh where the customer is paying for a sla right a durability reliability sla and a fixed price point across the blue and that can truly be delivered building a you know truly a sas platform um which could you know really take you off the science project and really get the benefits of cloud and and not worry about application durability reliability performance of your of your enterprise we just become really really important in this pandemic if you notice suddenly in covert 19 the all the discussions about private cloud and hybrid cloud are all gone people truly want the public cloud experience and truly want the benefits of cloud right which is what we we stand behind so we're the only player in the market at scale which really sells the sas platform or data protection almost everybody else has a hardware strategy co-located hosted with some somebody else or just starting really starting the grounds up got it okay now as i cover the company you really emphasize momentum within the fortune 500. so two-part question have you penetrated the fortune 500 and then part two are you coming down market into more more of the small and mid-sized enterprise and if so how are you going to do that i think a predominant focus has been uh the mid market right uh the the 500 to 5k sort of a segment is a predominant focus we do uh sell up market and do a really good job going up market uh we have 50 of fortune 500 as customers now um and in three or fortune 15. um i think the the the digital transformation the cloud transformation is predominantly heavy in mid-market and it's a high velocity sort of a repeatable business model for us to follow uh there is a huge demand in up market which we often get pulled into and and resolve and go up but as i said a predominant motion is a mid-market motion um how do we go to market in red market our number one sort of go-to-market route is is our channel partners uh which we 100 channel company when it comes to you know uh go to market route and uh and specifically for the mid market we we that's a that's a predominant route to got market just to kind of add a little more for your your audience too i think yeah absolutely the channel side and when you think about what these these partners both kind of the regional boutiques as well as the mega multinationals are all uh working with our customers on is that digital transformation that journey to the cloud and particularly over the past three or four months with the reality of this situation of work from home and other things that is accelerating dramatically for our customers and our partners are helping us access those mid-market smbs as well as you know partners are bringing us into new fortune 100s that we had a an opportunity there just brought to us this week so that's that's a you know the route to market is just reset is purely channel and we're seeing a great movement led by our partners to help their customers with that digital transformation in their cloud journey got it so so tim a follow-up question for you then on the partner strategy uh these partners that are working with you is it mainly like a reseller model where they resell it into the customer and then the partner steps away or is it more of a managed services model where there's a recurring revenue opportunity for the partner or is it a mix i mean do you have any type of feel for what type of mix you're seeing out there on your partner base yeah i mean so i think interestingly you know because we're a sas company everything is about recurring revenues or in the case of a partner recurring margins and growth and adding on incremental services we happen to be one of the first major i.t you know corporate i.t workloads that a customer will adopt and so we're seeing our partners use us as that landing spot that point of entry for cloud and then building on incremental cloud services or professional services on top of that our ecosystem of partners ranges right so there are traditional var resellers for sure who they are reselling us like they would anything else and then moving on to the next where druva is handling that that sas management then we also have managed service providers right our outsourcers that are managing the druva platform and that data protection landscape for that customer so it varies but i think one of the exciting things for for partners and why we're seeing a dramatic increase of demand from partners wanting to work with us is because it's super relevant in the zeitgeist of the day it has a ton of opportunity to help customers transform which is what all partners are trying ultimately to help their customers do and then the economics of it the financial profitability the reoccurring margins the the net retention expansion um on the economic side which matters to partners too um is is extremely um lucrative got it great so a follow-up question for for both of you um from the technology side first in terms of how you've architected the platform and then second how partners uh can leverage that i believe correct me from wrong you're built on aws does that mean you're still multi-cloud um can partners basically protect sas applications that are running on multiple clouds but they're doing it through through something that's built on top of aws is that how it works pretty much so we wanted to take the complexity away of from data protection you know you have to think about a backup software a backup target a storage management tiering management and you know there's seven to eight different sort of uh components move all the moving parts to simplify it we've built a sas platform on top of aws but uh we have the best cloud coverage of all data prediction partners so we cover sas applications uh like office 65 uh sfdc you know google we also have the best coverage for cloud native platforms like ec2 rds dynamodb and also the hosted applications on public cloud like oracle sql microsoft applications right so we build the best coverage for all these uh you know transformative uh applications people are leading within the cloud so so it's it's a great opportunity for a partner community to sort of lead the discussion saying you know as the customers re-architect their data for the application footprint or digitalize themselves you know data protection security are foundational to how they played in the cloud and we have the best coverage to make sure they are safe and protected and and enabled without the complexity of understanding how to do it all in the cloud got it okay and then shifting that technology conversation over to tim and the msps and the partners um can you tell me a little bit about as i've covered the company you guys have said your purpose built for msps a lot of sas companies overlook that opportunity does this mean you basically have a multi-tenant uh approach so that the msps can manage all their customers seamlessly what is the approach and how did you spot the opportunity from day one sure so i think i'll loop in one part of the last question then ties into this too but you know on the ews platform um you know there are a number of traditional partners that are looking to figure out how they start to work in the aws ecosphere right and we're a fantastic opportunity for them to do that in a classic it workload and then blossom out into other things like ai and ml then there are the born in the cloud aws consulting partners who were born in the time of you know cloud proliferation and helping customers migrate and innovate were equally you know interesting to them because it is another aws centric workload and the services they can build around that that also leads us into the the msp front yeah i think you know um there's a number of ways that i think drew has been innovative um from the spotting the opportunity like just brief did and as a founder and then on some of the go to market motions as well we're seeing so many customers particularly the ones that we service most frequently which are the midsize and lower enterprise wanting to focus on their core business which is not necessarily running i.t it is manufacturing things as providing services or quality of experience to their customers and so being able to outsource and have a service provider manage the gamut of i.t whether that's network storage and obviously in our case the data protection and governance and compliance is really where we saw the opportunity to differentiate and bring that as another leg to either a reseller who's trying to build a secondary services a managed services offering or the pure plays as well and provide that dashboard has you know a multi-tenancy single pane of glass uh with ap a rich set of apis to allow them to do what they need to do on behalf of the customer and make it a ease of doing business with us as a as a sas vendor got it okay so i want to do a time check uh for those of you i don't know uh for our viewers and attendees um i don't know when you'll be watching this it could be years from now but we are recording this in mid-july of uh 2020 and obviously the coronavirus pandemic has affected all businesses all people worldwide from the druva vantage point did you guys pivot or evolve the business as the pandemic became to take hold or or impact the the world or has it been business as usual which i doubt what's been your approach i think it's been it's been quite frankly business as usual for us i think from a point of view that uh you know this this is a defining movement for for all things size and cloud um you know as uh the customer's physical proximity to their data centers was keeping them away in in many ways from a true transformative strategy on on public cloud so you know for instance as i said almost all of our competition has to go deliver hardware or install something or be on site we were not impacted from from work from home our motion evolved and improved over being able to help customers in their need of an art for digital transformation the customers focus on digitalizing their workforce visualizing the data center is completely aligned with our our product strategy so as a result uh we didn't miss a beat uh we are going to work from home in fact i think we have a huge amount of learning from it and we had an acceleration of our revenue while the majority of the competition missed their earnings we are actually accelerating through our through our performance uh in in the last two quarters and we can get this quarter as well uh anything about joe your your audience um you know the the reselling communities the msps particularly the resellers as all this hit they're trying to figure out how they help their customers through that and then and also facing things like supply chain challenges and what have you so i agree with just spree i think this was a moment in time that some of the value prop of what we do generically with sas and cloud but obviously the space rin really resonated with our resellers to help their customers through that and we've seen you know between our fourth quarter and first quarter in the first quarter was in the the thrust of the initial covid situation we saw over 70 increase in new opportunities brought to us by our partners which was an exact opposite that one would think of right in a global pandemic with all the you know compression of of uh you know the situation of budgets etc so lots of opportunity for partners good to hear now tell me a little bit as you look ahead uh i i know sometimes it can be difficult to look ahead with everything going on in the world but for the second half of 2020 what are your key priorities for the business as well as for the partner base i think we have many many many new innovations coming to market obviously won't be able to discuss and disclose them right now but we have a very busy roadmap to deliver some amazing innovation the best uh is ahead of us uh from a product point of view um from a partnership point of view i think we're expanding and tim can highlight more we're expanding into new new geos and new partnerships uh as we look ahead uh some of some are very interesting partnerships coming to table as well uh so so net net i think it's a it's a great time and place for us to double down increase focused on customer value uh partner value uh you know increasing our reach into more customers and more geos through through key partnerships so it's a lot to come to the table yeah i think one of the big focus areas for us in the partner organization joe is is how do we provide even richer uh enabling enablement materials for our partners right helping them with the business outcome selling not the how does it work is a huge part of like just reset of our value prop to a customer is simplifying that complexity and so helping our cus our partners identify the core business outcomes that they can go help their customers with and doing that in a fluid turnkey you know um kit-like delivery system so that's a big focus for ours to build on what we have there today and then it's just said yeah there are some other interesting things uh like the road map maybe that we should uh revisit here uh in the near future with you absolutely i'll keep asking the questions without a doubt in the weeks and the months to come hey maybe one more uh sorry point to the same question sorry i missed one point i think you mentioned msp on msp the best is yet to come actually we have a we have a very impressive roadmap for msp as well it's a predominant strategy for us to go down market uh so i think you you'll see a lot of interesting announcements and how we integrate better how we uh you know self-service and build a self-service model for msp is a lot better than what we have today it's a lot to come on down front as well okay well i'll certainly be watching and i know our readers will be and our viewers will be watching as well one final question for you on the financial front um you know you're venture backed will you pursue another round of funding are you looking for a strategic exit perhaps in m a or or maybe even ipo and i know you can't make guarantees but can you give me any clues as to what's on the white board i think the best for the best outcome for druva is obviously to be a public company uh you know i i don't i don't personally believe majority company should go public not everybody's carved out for that i think given the size of the market given a transformative nature of what we're doing given attraction i think driver has a has a very good shot and you know and should go public um and to thrive being a public company with that in mind uh would be would you pursue a strategic exit you know never say never never said no but that's not enough that's not a designed desired outcome for druva uh at the same time uh you know capital uh uh we are at the point where we are accelerating our growth and efficiency uh so could we put more fuel in the fire and raise about capital possibility uh all depends on how we see pandemic unfolding how drava grows and you know this is a this is a great time uh in the market to be sort of also raising private money so tbd to be seen i think the fundamental focus is to solve the customer pain point and to grow the business and and we are very well capitalized for that all other possibilities are great and as the time evolves we will look at them okay well just greet thank you again for your time today i appreciate it absolutely thank you very much and tim thank you as well really appreciate your time thanks joe pleasure to meet you i will pause there