New $185M Growth Investment Will Fuel AppDirect’s Global Expansion

Businesses looking for digital services ranging from telecommunications to SaaS, whether to offer them or even resell them, can use AppDirect’s subscription commerce platform.

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Daniel Saks, president and co-CEO of AppDirect, touts the platform as a Shopify, but for businesses needing recurring digital services, offered via a single sign on.

The 10-year-old company, which has headquarters in both San Francisco and Montreal, raised $185 million in growth funding led by Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec and existing investors. The company previously raised funds five years ago, a $140 million Series E round of funding led by JP Morgan Chase. Now, its largest round to date brings AppDirect’s total equity raised to approximately $465 million, Saks said.

Chris Arsenault, managing partner at Inovia Capital, one of AppDirect’s existing investors, said in a statement that the company’s platform is popular with organizations that have to consistently change the list of software applications they use to perform basic tasks.

“AppDirect has a proven business model and a solid client base that uses its platform daily to run their core operations,” he added. “For Inovia, this announcement is an important milestone in a longstanding relationship that has seen AppDirect flourish from a small startup to a major player in the cloud-based business services market.”

Since that last funding round in 2015, the company experienced a Gross Merchandise Value of more than 1,500 percent to over $1 billion, expanded its global footprint, and went from 100 merchants to more than 2,000 globally, Saks said.

An IMARC Group report estimates that the global anything-as-a-service subscription market will grow to more than $340 billion by 2024. AppDirect is poised to take advantage of that growth and will use the new funding to support organic expansion, consider strategic acquisitions, and make additional hires.

A few growth areas for the company are scaling its investment in the platform with digital engagement tools and investing in marketing and awareness. Despite being around since 2009, AppDirect continues to operate under the radar, Saks said. As a result, the company is launching a podcast called “Decoding Digital,” to help others learn how to navigate the digital transition.

“We see opportunity in investing in the platform and supporting our merchant and customer bases,” Saks said. “In addition, artificial intelligence will allow us to have visibility into buying behaviors so we can advise our businesses on actions they can take to boost their revenue and save on costs.”

Illustration: Li-Anne Dias