The world’s largest provider of software-as-service, Cvent has raised $136 million in funding led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA), Insight Venture Partners and Greenspring Associates. Cvent is an online event management provider, along with helping clients with venue selection and web survey solutions.
“It’s rare to find a company that is consistently profitable, growing exponentially and poised to capture even more market share,” said Tony Florence, a partner at NEA. “Already the market leader in the event management space, we see tremendous potential for Cvent—especially for the Cvent Supplier Network, which continues to transform the way event planners find and do business with hotels, special event venues and restaurants.”
A first round of funding in more than ten years for Cvent, the money will be used for considerable technology developments, continued global expansion and potential acquisitions. The company plans to invest a portion of the money to hire more than 200 employees in the next year, bringing the headcount to 1,000 employees. Half of the newly-hires will be hired as engineers whose will be working on expanding the company’s suite of cloud-based event management.
“We pride ourselves in our company’s stability. This is evidenced by the fact that eleven of our twelve senior management executives have been with the company since its inception, and we’ve had forty straight quarters of growth,” said Reggie Aggarwal, Founder and CEO of Cvent. “But the real driving force behind our success is the loyalty and belief that our customers and employees have placed in us. As we take Cvent to the next level, we hope that they’ll continue to believe in us.”
Cvent will also be looking to transform its social media and mobile offerings by accelerating the growth of the Cvent Supplier Network, the world’s largest free online marketplace that connects event planners to venues. The network alone is projected to generate $4 billion in business for hotels this year – up from $60 million in 2008. This funding is the largest for any private business software company for this year.