[Funding alert] DevOps startup Esper raises $60M in Series C led by Insight Partners

India and US-based Esper on Monday announced that it has raised $60 million in Series C funding round led by Insight Partners, with participation from existing investors including Scale Venture Partners, Madrona Ventures, and Root Ventures. The investment brings Esper's total funding to $100 million and follows the company’s $30 million Series B raised just four months ago, in May 2021.

Esper developed the industry’s first DevOps platform for intelligent edge devices, and was named one of the top 10 hottest startups in 2021 by CRN.

This latest funding round will primarily be used to further expand Esper’s ability to get the word out to more enterprise customers.

“India witnessed unprecedented digital transformation since the pandemic, which makes it a unique market with the potential to adopt DevOps across every industry. Android DevOps has the potential to transform Indian businesses through their journey towards agility, increase operational efficiency and control costs,” said Yadhu Gopalan, CEO and Co-founder at Esper. 

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Commenting on the investment, Philine Huizing, Vice President at Insight Partners, said,

“For years, we’ve seen these massive projections about IoT devices of all kinds. But on the ground, enterprises and SMBs are struggling with the reality that large-scale deployments of devices are hard and expensive when you go it alone."

"Esper has emerged as the only platform that provides modern DevOps capabilities in a package purpose-built for intelligent edge devices. And even better, developers tell us that they love using Esper,” she added.

Esper has over 200 paying customers and over 2,000 developers use its platform for product development. The Seattle-based company quadrupled headcount during 2021, and tripled its office footprint in Bellevue on a square footage basis.

“Esper’s team in India is pivotal to the company’s growth. Currently, 83 employees work out of India and are responsible for designing and engineering Esper's core DevOps platform along with tackling the core marketing and sales functions. We plan to increase the employee count to 200 by 2022 as we are looking to expand the Engineering and Sales functions,” said Shiv Sundar, COO and Co-founder at Esper. 

“Customer expectations are higher than ever. When a point of sale terminal in a retailer is out of order, the merchant doesn’t have the time or expertise to fix it. These devices are mission-critical and expected to work flawlessly 24x7. This is especially true for devices directly tied to revenue generation or in verticals like medical devices where life might literally be on the line. We built Esper with the customer’s customer in mind,” Yadhu Gopalan further adds.