Open source customer relationship management firm SugarCRM has raised $33m in its latest financing round. The company says it will use the additional capital to, "continue its advancement into the enterprise market and to pursue strategic business opportunities."
The funding is a mixture of equity and debt financing and takes SugarCRM’s total investment to around $80m.
The investment round was led by New Enterprise Associates (NEA) and also included new investors Silicon Valley Bank and Gold Hill Capital, Existing investors Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Walden International also contributed. Brooke Seawell, Venture Partner at NEA has also joined SugarCRM’s Board of Directors.
The eight year old company competes with the likes of Salesforce.com and Microsoft in the CRM stakes and claims around one million end-users. It also claims to be the third most widely used CRM platform on the market.
"In 2011 we saw demand for CRM solutions grow exponentially with an increased number of enterprise companies looking for an open and flexible CRM platform that can effectively scale with their growing businesses. Our growth was up 67 percent last year, and we are off to a great start in 2012," said Larry Augustin, CEO of SugarCRM.
CBR spoke to Augustin a while ago, and he told us of his plans for the company, aiming to match the success of rival salesforce.com. "CRM itself is a very large market segment and I think – and salesforce.com shows this – we can grow to a $1bn plus company," he told us.
You can read the full Q&A with Larry Augustin here.
