Australian digital design unicorn Canva provides more than 60,000 free templates and millions of images for creative design use. The graphic design platform is used by hundreds of thousands of organizations thanks to its intuitive drag-and-drop system. Its clients include Warner Music, American Airlines, Hubspot, and Ingram Micro.
The firm has seen a surge in business as the global pandemic has made more people work from home. In fact, Canva has doubled its paid user base with 500,000 organizations and 1.5 million subscribers using its premium service, Canva Pro. More than 30 million people use the platform monthly.
Recently, the company partnered with FedEx Office to provide access to templates and illustrations for use in business materials. This is in addition to its partnership with Pinterest, which helps users with a range of design tools.
In June, the company announced it had raised $60 million in funding, bringing its valuation up from $3.2 billion to $6 billion. The round was led by return investors Bond, General Catalyst, Sequoia Capital China, Felicis Ventures, and Blackbird Ventures.
According to Canva co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Cliff Obrecht, the round was oversubscribed with interest from angels and new VCs, but the company resisted the extra capital.
“At our stage, investors are looking to deploy $50 million+ in capital,” Obrecht explained. “Even our existing investors were looking to deploy between $50 million and $100 million, but we said “Oh, gee, we really don’t want to be diluted that much because we have a lot of conviction in the business and we don’t need that much money.””
The company plans to use this new funding to develop its education and enterprise offerings as it expands further into the US and other key markets around the world.
Founded in 2012, Canva lets users easily create designs for social media posts, logos, and presentations. It also offers a business-oriented product called Canva for Enterprise. The company has seen a 50% increase in shared designs and a 25% increase in designs created on the platform each month. Canva is growing 100% year-over-year in both revenue and users, with customers spanning 190 countries.
