A Single Platform That Unifies Data Protection and Management for Business-Critical Data Druva, Inc.

Over the past few years, the cloud computing paradigm has witnessed dramatic changes in the way information is managed, especially, given the exponential increase in data that is stored in a wide range of locations. A key characteristic of cloud computing is ease of accessing cloud services without the need for any expert knowledge of the underlying technology. It has lower costs, rapid scaling, easier maintenance, and service availability anywhere, anytime. But therein lies a great challenge: how to easily manage and protect data and cloud-based workloads when the environments in which these data are stored is becoming more complex—from endpoint devices such as laptops and computers to on-premises data centers as well as the cloud.

Two ingenious minds, Jaspreet Singh and Milind Borate saw the painpoints and founded Druva in 2008. Since its start with 7 employees and 53 customers, the company has grown to over 500 employees that work day in and out to provide the best-of-breed services to its customers. With over 4000+ customers and three of them being Fortune 15, Druva has witnessed immense growth over the past decade. Starting from its Series A funding in 2010, the company raised five more series of funding including its late-stage funding of $80M in 2017and has raised nearly $200M in total funding.

Delivering the industry’s first “Data Management-as-a-Service (DMaaS) solution that aggregates data from endpoints, servers, and cloud applications, Druva today is a global leader in Cloud Data Protection and Management. The company’s software provides a console--a single ‘pane of glass’ view of an organization’s entire storage footprint and enables data protection, governance and intelligence — dramatically increasing the availability and visibility of business-critical information.

As the industry’s fastest-growing data protection provider, Druva is currently trusted by some of the most renown and reputable global organizations, and protects more than 100-petabytes (PB) of data.

In-conversation with CEO, Jaspreet Singh:

Q. There is nothing more important for a successful small business than a well-defined mission and vision statements. Can you explain your M&V statements in brief?

Milind and I decided early on that our prime mission was to build an enduring company; one that lasts through the decades. To accomplish this, we made it our mission to focus on developing an integrated platform rather than a simple collection of products. This is how we deliver value to our customer network.

Viewing ourselves as a DMaaS company, we adhere to a corporate philosophy that has three key ingredients: a strong mission and culture, the right team, and a focus on adding real value for our customers.

Q. Any company, big or small, must have a sense of authenticity and originality to succeed. Is your company a ‘Leader’ or a ‘Follower’?

We are a leader. But to be a leader, we must be a customer-focused company. Offering a Software-as-a-Solution (SaaS) model is disruptive to the market which consists of companies that provide a mix of hardware and software. Druva is the only company that offers a cloud-only solution and I believe that definitely sets us apart in the industry.

Q. “Earning trust and respect of consumers is through consistent focus on delivering high quality in all of our actions.” How do you interpret this statement?

Customer feedback and insight is incredibly important to us at Druva. We have regular Customer Advisory Boards where we bring in key customers to understand the issues they face and get their feedback on product ideas. This helps us to look at things from the customers’ perspective understanding their pain points, motivations, and needs. Then, we do our best to incorporate their feedback into our products. And today, following such a customer-centric culture, we have grown our customer base dramatically in less than 10 years.

Q. What makes your company one of the best in the industry?

Again, we focus on our customers as they move to the cloud and make sure we add value in everything we do. Additionally, we strive to offer clear market differentiators, grow our customer base and increase revenue, and serve as an informational resource to our customers. Companies face growing complexities as they manage growing amounts of data that are stored in many different areas.

We offer a true SaaS solution that is easy to use, scalable, features a pay-as-you-go model to help organizations to manage, backup and recover their data no matter where it is located. I think this is the reason that makes us one of the best companies in the industry.

The Future Roadmap

Being a cloud-based software company with many competitors who are much larger and more established, Druva is moving ahead of the game and out-innovating the competition. And the company is doing this by providing a SaaS solution using a cloud-native approach. In addition, Druva is also one of Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) largest partners, and currently has more than 100PB of data under management. The cloud-to-cloud data management and protection segment is growing rapidly. Looking into the future, the company is expecting to IPO in 18-24 months and is in a major growth phase planning to grow both organically and through M&A.

Meet the Marvelous Duo

Jaspreet Singh, Founder, and CEO: Jaspreet brings a combination of product vision and management experience that has allowed Druva to be one of the fastest-growing companies in the $28B data protection and management market. His entrepreneurial spirit enabled him to bootstrap Druva, which has now raised approximately $200M in venture funding.

Prior to starting Druva, Jaspreet held foundational roles at Veritas and Ensim Corp., where he held a number of increasingly responsible positions. Jaspreet holds multiple patents and has a B.S. in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati.

Mr. Milind Borate, Co-Founder & CTO: Mr. Borate has over 20 years of experience in enterprise product development and delivery. Prior to Druva, he served as Vice President of Engineering at Druva Software Pvt. Ltd. Mr. Borate has also worked at Veritas Software as Technical Director for SAN-FS. He serves as Director of Druva Software Pvt. Ltd. and Druva Inc. He has filed over 15 patent applications (4 allotted) and co-authored “Undocumented Windows NT” in 1998. He holds a B.E (CS) degree from University of Poona and MTech (CS) degree from IIT, Bombay.

“We have an average customer rating of 4.75/5.0 with Gartner Peer Insight Reviews and a Net Promoter Score of 85. Focusing on our customers and making sure we add value to them is our motivation.”