- General
- October 15, 2020
- 4 minutes read
Idera Acquires Qubole; Details
On Wednesday, Qubole, a data management platform, clinched a deal to be acquired by Idera, a Houston-Texas based company that…
On Wednesday, Qubole, a data management platform, clinched a deal to be acquired by Idera, a Houston-Texas based company that serves a parent firm to a portfolio of B2B software brands. As a privately-held company, Qubole, which was founded in 2011, had raised over $70 million in funding from investors including notable names like IVP, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, and CRV.
The financial details of Qubole’s acquisition were not formally disclosed but we’re here with a scoop on insider information we gained access to.
According to a source familiar with the matter, Qubole was purchased for $75 million, an amount that’s just in the ballpark of what the company had raised from investors. Such an acquisition price implies that employees and common stockholders of the company were left wiped out and holding the bag after Idera’s acquisition.
The low acquisition price for Qubole followed a number of challenges faced by the company, according to information provided by our source. It’s such that Qubole was experiencing business hiccups, having lost its second biggest customer this year and on track to lose even more in the coming times. Along with business struggles, Qubole had been dogged with a talent drain, with a substantial number of employees and executives having left the company.
Qubole seems to have been a victim of the coronavirus pandemic, as the crisis significantly affected the revenues of some of its enterprise customers and, in turn, led to losses for Qubole as such customers paused the use of its products. According to our source, Qubole sought to raise more money but couldn’t and had to resort to what can be termed a fire sale.
Qubole as a company was founded in 2011 by the duo of Ashish Thusoo and Joydeep Sen Sarma, two engineers who leveraged their previous experience as part of Facebook’s original Data Service Team from 2007 to 2011. It’s mainly a tool used by enterprises to gather and manage large amounts of data.
Qubole is based out of the city of Santa Clara, California but also maintains offices in New York City, San Francisco, London, Singapore, and Bangalore.
