Australia’s Canva raises $85m at $3.2b valuation

Australia-based online design platform Canva said it has secured an additional US$85 million in funding, which boosted its valuation to US$3.2 billion.

Canva co-founder and CEO Melanie Perkins / Photo credit: Canva

The investors in the round include General Catalyst, Bessemer Venture Partners, Blackbird, Sequoia China, and Mary Meeker’s Bond.

The latest funding exercise follows Bond’s earlier investment in Canva in May, which more than doubled the unicorn’s valuation to US$2.5 billion at the time.

Canva CEO and co-founder Melanie Perkins told Bloomberg that the fresh funds will be used to double its workforce to 1,400 and support its new business called Canva for Enterprise.

The new product offers a brand kit, marketing and sales templates, and approval-based workflows. It also allows employees of organizations to access Canva’s design library, including its brand assets, fonts, colors, etc.

Canva for Enterprise also provides tools for better collaboration like team folders and a dashboard for managing teams.

“We’re in a fortunate place because the market has been disaggregated,” said Perkins on TechCrunch. “The way we think about the pain point consumers have is that people are being inconsistent with the brand, and there are huge inefficiencies within the organization, which is why people have been literally asking us to build this exact product.”

Canva’s website and apps help people and companies create banners, logos, social media graphics, and presentations, marketing and sales decks, and other design products.

Canva is available for free for individual users. For corporations, there’s a premium version called Canva Pro, which is available for US$12.95/month. Canva said the product now has more than 850,000 paying subscribers.

The company claims that 20 million people use Canva each month, with users in 190 countries across the globe.