Canva, now valued at $4.7 billion, releases its enterprise platform

Paige Murphy
By Paige Murphy | 17 October 2019
 

Australian graphic design tool website Canva has raised another $US85 million in funding, valuing the business at $US3.2 billion ($AU4.7 billion).

Investors from this round include Bond, General Catalyst, Blackbird, Bessemer Venture Partners and Sequoia China.

The Australia start-up had previously raised $US70 million in May of this year, valuing the graphic design tool website at $US2.5 billion ($AU3.6 billion) at the time.

Alongside its additional funding, the company has launched a cloud-based design platform Canva for Enterprise.

Canva, founded in 2013, is used by more than 20 million people in 190 countries each month, with 85% of Fortune 500 companies already using its site and tools.

The start-up surveyed 500 marketers in the US and found 74% of companies believe on-brand marketing materials are vital to growing brand awareness but only half were confident that all their material in the public domain met brand brand guidelines.

Canva general manager of Enterprise and head of BizOps Tiffany Tai told AdNews says the findings presented a "huge disconnect".

"We’ve heard from many marketers requesting a design solution that is as easy to use as Canva, and with more brand control," Tai says.

"So with this feedback, we decided to build an enterprise level solution - Canva for Enterprise. It has been approximately a year in the making to ensure we’re giving our enterprise users the functionality they need - and we’re incredibly happy to be launching it today."

Priced at $30 per seat per month,Tai says the new product is specifically designed for larger organisations, while its other paid product Canva Pro is targeted at single users.

Enterprise allows marketing and design teams to set brand guidelines and templates to be used company-wide with the option to access Canva’s library or lock content to on-brand assets only.

It also allows collaboration across brands, teams and time zones with a built-in comment section, team dashboard to manage teams and assign roles and shared team folders.

The new offering can integrate across platforms used by enterprises including Google Drive, Dropbox, Mailchimp, Slack, Facebook and OneDrive to create a more streamlined workflow.

“Our vision for Canva has always been to empower the whole world to design, so we are excited to take this next step and cater to the unique needs of enterprises who want to enable their whole company to design on-brand presentations, marketing materials and social media graphics,” Canva CEO and co-founder Melanie Perkins says. 

“One of the challenges for enterprises who span offices, geographies and teams, has been to ensure consistent use of their brand, and we're really excited to launch a product that specifically solves these needs.” 

Brands including Re/Max, Realty Austin and Watsons have already started to work with Canva for Enterprise. 

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