Aryaka has announced an additional $45m funding from Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners and Third Point Ventures. This is series D funding has been led by Third Point Ventures, and existing investors, as well as Deutsche Telekom Unfortunately, we could not get stock quote ETR:DTE this time.. This DT investment in Aryaka is interesting in so many ways.
Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners (DTCP) is the investment arm of Deutsche Telekom and has investments of about $2bn. Amongst their realised opportunities are WebEx, which was sold to Cisco in 2007, Ruckus Wireless, which IPO’d in 2012, and has subsequently been purchased by Brocade.
We focus on great ideas with the potential to disrupt. We pay attention to entrepreneurs and managers who not only have a great vision, but more importantly have the ability to execute it. We are disciplined about valuation and sensitive about identifying risk and understanding reward. In this respect, we regard technology as an asset class. – DTCP Portfolio Webpage
After five quarters of 100% growth year-on-year and 500 customers from over 63 countries, Aryaka will offer that return on the DT investment. Aryaka has built out their infrastructure, adding customers makes it more profitable. The DT investment will also allow them to spread their net a little wider (if they have the customer site density) and minimise the cost of the links to customer sites.
In addition, this round has provided them with a new CFO, Aidan Cullan. Aidan has 25 years of experience in global technology companies within the software, networking, and telecommunications industries. He was CFO at CliQr Technology, Gigamon, Sylantro Systems, and Tasman Networks. CliQr sold to Cisco, Sylantro to Broadsoft and Tasman to Nortel.
Since Aryaka is an SD-WAN platform, using their own network infrastructure, a telecoms company is helpful in supporting their infrastructure.
We should see the following over the next few weeks:
- A Deutsche Telekom logo appearing on the Aryaka website.
- Aryaka infrastructure starts to use Deutsche Telekom links for its private core
Aryaka gets the backing of a recognised European service provider, which will attract customers looking to make the switch to a managed SD-WAN environment. Deutsche Telekom gains use of its infrastructure with Aryaka, rather than Internet services. This hedges against the hybrid and SD-WAN switch of its customers and avoids margin erosion from the Internet.
Is the new CFO there to help Aryaka become part of the Deutsche Telekom portfolio in the future? Or another service provider?