Aravo Solutions will announce this week $7 million of new funding that despite the sour economy will let it hire sales, service and engineering staff.
Half a million suppliers use the site, says Tim Albinson
But the more inspiring news from the San Francisco startup might be this: it boasts the world’s largest enterprise software-as-a-service Web site, which it built for General Electric. Half a million suppliers use the site to feed information on products, themselves and compliance issue to GE, with thousands of new suppliers joining each day, says Tim Albinson, founder and CEO.
Aravo is a supply-chain company that claims its can take cost and complexity out of a customer’s relationships with its suppliers. For the eight-year-old startup of between 50 and 60 workers, taking on the GE project “was a big deal,” says Albinson.
It took 5 months to sell GE on the effort and seven months to implement the technology – a “tremendous amount of work and effort,” he says.
The $7 million in financing brings to $30 million the amount of money Aravo has raised. The series D round was led by Charles Schwab/Big Sky Partners and included Stephen Friedman, a retired chairman of Goldman Sachs, and Tony Mayer, a former CEO of JP Morgan Capital.
The success of Aravo bode well for the SaaS industry! Commendation should also be given to General Electric for taking what other might essentially find too risky.
We will be closely monitoring how this ends up.
Cheering from the sidelines!
Alain Yap
Morph Labs