Indian firm leads £80m investment in data platform Looker

International data platform Looker has raised $103m (c£80.8m) in Series E investment.

The round was led by PremjiInvest, the company founded by Indian billionaire Azim Premji, and drew participation from Cross Creek Advisors and existing backers.

Looker’s digital platform aims to streamline the data supply chain by putting actionable information in the hands of employees.

It works to accelerate the time-to-insight window by consolidating fragmented data tools from data preparation to visualisation and cataloguing to governance.

Frank Bien, chief executive at Looker, said: “We believe that data becomes exponentially more valuable when it is intelligently integrated together, at scale, across the entire organisation, so Looker took a uniquely different and modern approach to the myriad of point solutions and single-use data tools.

“We built a new platform for data that greatly simplifies the data supply chain, so organisations can extract value from their data more quickly.”

He continued: “We are pleased to have Premji and Cross Creek invest in Looker and in our vision to bring a new class of data platform to companies around the world.”

Sandesh Patnam, lead partner for PremjiInvest in the US, commented: “At Premji, we look for the highest quality companies that are uniquely positioned to become leaders in their industry.

“We chose to invest in Looker because we were impressed with Looker’s business execution, product differentiation and vision.”

He added: “We are excited to lead this round to support Looker’s rapid growth and improve their position in a growing industry.”

Looker has grown its revenues 70% in 2018 and attracted nearly 500 new customers, including tech company Cisco, broadcaster ESPN and retail giant Marks and Spencer Plc.

The California-headquartered firm employs almost 600 people across seven offices in the US, London, Dublin and Tokyo, with 200 jobs created since the start of the year.

Following the Series E financing, Looker has raised $280.5m (c£220m) since 2013.

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