AppDirect, the leading subscription commerce platform, announced investments of US$185 million from global institutional investor Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ) and existing investors. The $185 million in funding brought the total equity raised by AppDirect to approximately $465 million.

Since its funding round in 2015, AppDirect has experienced tremendous growth across all indicators – increasing Gross Merchandise Value (GMV) more than 1500 percent since 2015 to over US$1 billion, expanding its global footprint, and servicing more than 2000 merchants around the globe. The new funding supports accelerated organic expansion, strategic acquisitions, and additional hiring.

Global Access to Technology

“Today, businesses are facing unprecedented challenges. Many companies began digital selling practically overnight, but need assistance integrating new technologies and processes into their operations and making them work at scale for the long-term,” said Daniel Saks, President, and Co-CEO of AppDirect. “Our mission at AppDirect has always been to make technology globally accessible, and we are rising to meet that calling at a time when it feels especially urgent. We couldn’t be more excited that CDPQ and our existing investors are partnering with us on that journey as we enter a new phase of expansion. This renewed support from new and existing long-term partners reaffirms their confidence in our vision, our growth trajectory, and the market opportunity.”

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The New Era of B2B Subscription Commerce

In just the last few years, the “old” world of products and one-time transactions has transformed into a new era of subscription commerce with predictable, recurring revenue for everything from software and consumer media streaming services to heating and air conditioning maintenance. However, many companies are running into the limits of their subscription billing tools, making it difficult to bring products to market quickly, creating a disjointed customer experience, and creating management challenges. Organizations now need to support full subscription commerce. This transition includes integrating commerce flows from any online or offline sales channels while at the same time meeting customer demand for instant provisioning of tools and services.

As more Business-to-Business (B2B) companies make this shift, the 2020s are set to become the era of B2B subscription commerce. Public cloud offerings have made software-as-a-service (SaaS) ubiquitous, and B2B companies now are looking at subscription models for anything that can be monetized based on value rather than ownership. The IMARC Group predicts that the global anything as a service subscription market will grow to over US$340 billion by 2024, reaching a compound annualized growth rate of approximately 24 percent.

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Digital Transformation of Businesses with Cloud Services 

“AppDirect solutions are becoming increasingly popular with organizations that rely on a large, ever-changing list of software to perform most of their basic tasks,” said Chris Arsenault, Managing Partner at Inovia. “AppDirect has a proven business model and a solid client base that uses its platform daily to run their core operations. 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.”

AppDirect opens vast options for organizations to quickly launch, scale, and transform their subscription business. The AppDirect platform powers millions of subscriptions worldwide, transforming commerce for leading companies like Vodafone, Keller Williams, ADP, Honeywell, and Deutsche Telekom; connecting their customers to the solutions they need to reach their full potential in the digital economy.

“AppDirect has established itself as the global leader in the application market for cloud services delivery. They are experiencing rapid growth, and the quality of its client network illustrates the success of its model,” said Thomas Birch, Global Managing Director, Venture Capital, and Technology at CDPQ. “AppDirect plays a key role in simplifying the digitalization of businesses through cloud services and CDPQ’s investment will contribute to the acceleration of its growth plan.”

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