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HPE spotted splashing its cash at Hedvig's $21.5m funding party

Just imagine what you could do with twenty-one million dollars

Secondary storage consolidating software startup Hedvig has gained $21.5m in a VC‑round of funding, with HPE putting in some of the cash.

The startup was founded by Avinash Lakshman in 2013, and previous $12.5m A‑round/seed funding and $18m B‑round took place in 2015. Total funding is now $52m. It strikes us that $21.5m is quite generous in today's tight VC funding environment; lucky Hedvig must have had a good story to tell the VCs.

There were new investments from Singapore-based EDBI and Hewlett Packard Pathfinder, which is part of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), plus expanded investments from Atlantic Bridge Ventures, including its Oman Technology Fund, and contributions from existing investors True Ventures and Vertex Ventures.

The HPE connection is quite strong. Milan Shetti, CTO of the Data Center Infrastructure Group at HPE, will serve as a technical advisor to Hedvig, and Hedvig says HPE’s strategic investment will assist it in offering its software-defined storage product to enterprises architecting hybrid IT.

Hedvig will use the latest funding to expand into new markets, develop end-to-end cloud and backup solutions for large enterprises, and grow its engineering, sales and channel teams. We’re told that, with EDBI’s support and Singapore as a focal point, Hedvig will expand its development and go-to-market resources across Asia Pacific.

It has appointed Ediz Ertekin as SVP of worldwide sales and field operations and he’ll have a part to play in this.

So Hedvig will now aim to grow strongly in the Asia-Pacific region and, we assume, look to have HPE help in selling its Developing DPS product to large enterprises.

A canned quote from Ms Swee Yeok CHU, CEO and president of EDBI, went like this: “Hedvig’s next-generation SDS platform allows enterprises to leverage multiple cloud storage options to perform computing tasks of varying complexity, hence providing the flexibility to meet their increasingly sophisticated data needs. Singapore’s leading data hub position will be an ideal base for Hedvig to target the Asian market with EDBI’s support.”

Lakshman was keen as mustard in his quote: “This investment round is a testament to the hard work and dedication of the Hedvig team. We’ll build on our early customer success in key financial services, service provider, manufacturing, energy and retail markets by continuing to innovate in both cloud and backup capabilities. With this latest investment, we are poised to grab the No 1 spot in the fragmented software-defined storage market.”

Poised to grab the number 1 spot in software-defined storage; really? No doubt Hedvig has a good product, but great enough to blow past Dell with its SDS products, including the VMware VSAN offering, DataCore, Primary Data, Nexenta, RedHat, and many others with SDS products featuring no hardware supplier lock-in? Like really? Give that man a chutzpah award. ®

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