AppsFlyer raises US$210mil in Series D funding led by General Atlantic

• Funds will go into enhancing its open platform for third-party developers
• The company’s total funding now stands at US$294 million

APPSFLYER, the global attribution leader, on Jan 21 announced a US$210 million (RM852 million) Series D funding round led by General Atlantic, a global growth equity firm based in New York. Alex Crisses, managing director at General Atlantic, and Anton Levy, co-president and global head of Technology, have joined AppsFlyer’s board of directors.

This investment comes three years after AppsFlyer’s Series C funding round, bringing the company’s total funding to US$294 million (RM1.2 billion). Since the previous round, AppsFlyer has grown its team 4X to 850 employees throughout 18 global offices. This year it opened its seventh Asia-Pacific office, in Jakarta, Indonesia.

AppsFlyer, one of the fastest-growing SaaS businesses, has seen 5X growth in Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR), exceeding US$150 million (RM609 million) in 2019. This follows a five-year growth in ARR from US$1 million (RM4.1 million) to US$100 million (RM406 million).

“We are excited to partner with a company that has an experienced team and a culture focused on the customer,” said Crisses.

“Attribution is becoming the core of the marketing tech stack, and AppsFlyer has established itself as a leader in this fast-growing category. AppsFlyer’s commitment to being independent, unbiased, and representing the marketer’s interests has garnered the trust of many of the world’s leading brands, and we see significant potential to capture additional opportunity in the market.”

From Indonesia’s Ruangguru to India’s Rubicon Research, General Atlantic has been expanding its Asia portfolio in recent years.

“At General Atlantic, we partner with transformative companies that drive success, innovation, and value, and we view AppsFlyer as a disruptor in its market,” said Levy.

“AppsFlyer’s scale enables it to provide accurate attribution data and ad- fraud protection, saving millions for advertisers. At the same time, the company has the end-user in mind every step of the way. As data privacy becomes one of the primary concerns facing brands, we are energized to partner with a technology leader that has a mindset of privacy by design and security first.”

“As a market leader, we are proud and humbled to know that AppsFlyer’s platform is used daily by many marketing teams around the world,” said AppsFlyer chief executive officer and co-founder Oren Kaniel.

“We take this responsibility very seriously. This new round enables us to double down on our mission to empower marketers with the tools needed to catapult their success and make accurate, better-informed, strategic decisions, as well as help drive innovation and transparency across our industry.”

Speaking about how this development will impact the region, AppsFlyer APAC president and managing director Ronen Mense, said: “This 2020 we predict that APAC will hold the world’s largest quantity of app-install ad spend at US$30 billion (RM122 billion). With massive volume and scale in this truly mobile-first region, marketers will be looking even harder into how they can better optimise their marketing budgets.

“There is also the imminent danger of fraud exposure for brands and users alike, where sadly, APAC leads in the world’s fastest fraud rate-growth at 60% higher than the global average. This funding will go into strengthening our open platform for partners and third-party developers, allowing them the flexibility to add their custom solutions on top of ours, so they can more confidently grow and protect their businesses in a highly competitive marketplace like APAC.”

AppsFlyer works with more than 12,000 customers, including leading brands such as Gojek, Agoda, Tokopedia, SEA Group (Shopee & Garena), HBO, Tencent, and Nike, and is connected to an ecosystem of over 5,000 partners, including Facebook, Google, Apple Search Ads, Twitter, Salesforce, Adobe, and Oracle.

Existing investors Qumra Capital, Goldman Sachs Growth, (DTCP) Deutsche Telekom Capital Partners, Pitango Venture Capital, and Magma Venture Partners participated in the round as well.