Hadoop Firm MapR Raises $110 Million


MapR, the Hadoop distributor announced on Monday it has raised $110 million funding from a number of venture capitalists. Google Capital invested $80 million which was supported by Qualcomm Ventures. Other than venture funding, MapR has secured $30m debt facility with Silicon Valley Bank. The funding round saw participation of Lightspeed Venture Partners, NEA, Redpoint Ventures and Mayfield Fund.

MapR works on the Apache Hadoop framework. It offers enterprise tools to businesses. Apache Hadoop is an open source, big data platform and MapR provides assistance to developers so they could work on Hadoop based projects with ease. The tools offered by MapR help recovering data, dispense data security and data protection.

With Google Capital’s $80 million funding, the company’s general partner Gene Frantz will now become one of the directors of MapR board. He said in a statement, “MapR helps companies around the world deploy Hadoop rapidly and reliably, generating significant business results. We led this round of funding because we believe MapR has a great solution for enterprise customers, and they’ve built a strong and growing business.”

The funding will give a boost to big data and analytics segments of MapR. The company said its bookings tripled in first quarter of 2014 from 2013. MapR has presence in almost all service sectors like healthcare, retail, media and telecom. One key difference between MapR and its rivals Hortonworks and Cloudera is MapR’s focus on software development which stands in contrast with the latter firms as they mainly are into service delivery.

90% of MapR’s revenue comes from Hadoop derived software development. The company currently has more than 500 paying licenses. Some of its clients are TransUnion, Cisco, HP, Beats Music and Samsung. Google Capital and Qualcomm’s investment in MapR is probably because of getting hold of Hadoop driven software market.

Director of Qualcomm Ventures, Mr. Albert Wang indicated this when he said, “Hadoop is a cornerstone for the big data ecosystem, and MapR has demonstrated its leadership in the space.” MapR executives said the funding will help the company continue with its organic growth. AllThingsD reported MapR earlier raised a $30 million in series C funding.