On the Growth Investor podcast, GrowthCap’s RJ Lumba speaks with investors, entrepreneurs, and executives to uncover insights and strategies for accelerating growth and succeeding in business. In this interview, Amit Sharma, CEO of CData Software, discusses CData’s journey from startup to a fast growing, profitable software company trusted by some of the largest corporations in the world. Amit also describes why CData chose Updata as a partner and their experience working with us.
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Growth Investor: CData Software CEO and Founder Amit Sharma on Ubiquitous Data Connectivity
Ubiquitous Data Connectivity: CData Software CEO and Founder Amit Sharma
Choosing a Partner
“When you are cash flow positive, you are not beholden to any investment. You’re not raising capital because you need capital. You can take your time. By the time we had grown to a certain scale, we realized that none of us had seen the journey where a company grows from $5 million to $20 to $30 to $50 to $100, so we wanted a partner who had seen that scale. Over a period of 2-3 years, we spoke to 30-50 investors, because we had all the time in the world to make our choice. Eventually, stars aligned for various reasons – we thought it was the right time, and Updata was the right partner for us because we had spoken with so many investors, we could contrast on different philosophies, different approaches, different personalities. On all of that, we felt really good about Updata, so we chose Updata.”
Updata’s Differentiation & Value Add
“A few things about Updata [drove the decision]…a lot of investors are very hungry for growth, and we were very conservative. We wanted an investor who understood the mindset that we had. We always want to push for growth, we had found product market fit so it was time to invest more in the business, but we still wanted to be very careful and thoughtful in how we did that. Updata seemed to be somebody who appreciated that and was looking for that. We also liked that they were operators, they had run businesses themselves, and those we are working with on our board have been CEOs in their past lives and have actually run companies and seen those cycles. That was a big part of why we chose Updata. They also specialize in B2B software and enterprise software. Even though we spoke to larger investors, we wanted somebody who specialized in this part of the market rather than general investors, and who understood the dynamics of growing while remaining profitable…they were good on all of those metrics.”
“They helped us with a few very prominent things. They helped us accelerate growth by investing more in the business. It seems easy, but when you have been very conservative and careful, you have to change the mindset of the organization to actually invest properly in the business, part of which was hiring senior level executives. Since the investment, we have added a CFO, a Chief Product Officer, and a CISO, so senior level executive leadership. We are a software company, we had not embarked on a cloud journey, so thinking through how we should go about adding cloud to our mix of products and how to navigate that – they have been very helpful in all of that.”