Keboola, a startup that provides data management tools through their data platform-as-a-service, received a $4.5 million seed funding round led by Presto Ventures, a Prague-based VC fund. The round was additionally backed by Reflex Capital, the VC fund of Mall Group founder Ondrej Fryc; several prominent angel investors and even the Rohlik Group cofounder Tomáš Čupr. Keboola’s success was partially attributed to $3.8 million in participation from Okredo, a Prague-based company.
Europe And North America Growth Plans
Keboola was completely self-funded and operated in bootstrap mode until recently. With this recent funding round, the company hopes to increase growth in North America and Europe.
By 2022, Keboola expects to earn over $8 million annually through their subscription program. They also anticipate growing revenue by at least 2X in the following year.
Keboola CEO Pavel Doležal stated that the company believed in the power of data and artificial intelligence thanks to their potential to change any business. However, they needed to spend a lot of time and money establishing infrastructure. Currently Google and Amazon are the only companies that fully capitalize on their data. We want to change this so other companies can access the data too.
Přemysl Rubeš, founder of lead investor Presto Ventures, stated that Keboola’s team has been early adopters with their product. They did a great job crafting Keboola into a cult company within the business intelligence and data analytics community. Rubeš is excited to support them as they grow into a global market predicted to reach $655 billion by 2029.
Operating System For Data
After meeting in late 2014, Pavel Doležal and Petr Šimeček began working on a project to create an “Operating System for Data”. Keboola was founded in 2017 by them and Milan Veverka in Prague. The four founders brainstormed about data, machine learning and the future of automated business processes interacting with artificial intelligence. They identified the need for a “data abstraction layer” that would allow anyone to build data applications without technical knowledge.
The Keboola team is 80% male and 20% female. Its members promote gender equality in all aspects of the business, from the top leadership to the lowest employees.
Snowflake-Based Fully-Scalable Platform
Keboola provides a unique solution for every data-driven company. It’s a fully- scalable platform built on Snowflake, which can be used by companies of all sizes, across the world, and in every segment. The platform’s data analysis tools and apps can be integrated into a unified interface. It provides enterprise-grade security and governance thanks to integrations, automations and a dashboard for monitoring various tools.
The open platform enables app integrations and customization possibilities through flexible programming languages. Users can modify the structure of their app and add components written in code— including machine learning algorithms.
Many of the company’s clients are Mall Group, ProductBoard, Rohlik Group, DXC and RBI — all of which are from different fields including finance, marketing, hospitality, retail and e-commerce.
