EDBI and Hewlett Packard Pathfinder Join Existing Investors to Accelerate Hedvig's Expansion into Asia, Advance Development of End-to-End Solutions and Continue Building a World-Class Team

SANTA CLARA, CA--(Marketwired - Mar 2, 2017) - Hedvig today announced the close of a $21.5 million Series C funding round with new investments from Singapore-based EDBI and Hewlett Packard Pathfinder, part of Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE). The round also included expanded investments from Atlantic Bridge Ventures, including its Oman Technology Fund, and contributions from existing investors True Ventures and Vertex Ventures. With a total of $52 million in financing to date, Hedvig will use the latest round of funding to expand into new markets, develop end-to-end cloud and backup solutions for large enterprises and grow its world-class engineering, sales and channel teams. Additionally, to help lead Hedvig's growth in the $7 billion software-defined storage (SDS) market*, the company announced in a separate release that technology sales veteran Ediz Ertekin has joined the company's executive team as SVP of Worldwide Sales and Field Operations.

"We've seen tremendous growth and traction from Hedvig since they launched in 2015. Their ability to attract customers ranging from blue-chip companies to large financial institutions like BNP Paribas is a testament to the quality of the product and support Hedvig offers," said Brian Long, managing partner at Atlantic Bridge. "Hedvig's strong vision for modern storage positions the company for clear leadership in the software-defined storage market, especially as enterprise use of public cloud continues to take hold."

New strategic investments from EDBI and Hewlett Packard Enterprise will accelerate Hedvig's growth in key markets. With EDBI's support and Singapore as a focal point, Hedvig will expand its development and go-to-market resources across Asia Pacific. The region has shown a significant increase in SDS demand, and is expected to grow at a CAGR of 32 percent through 2022.** HPE's strategic investment will assist Hedvig in offering its leading-edge SDS solution to enterprises architecting hybrid IT. Milan Shetti, CTO of the Data Center Infrastructure Group at HPE, will serve as a technical advisor to Hedvig.

"As cloud adoption gains traction in Asia, companies seek new storage solutions that could offer cloud-like agility, scalability and cost-efficiency to better manage their voluminous data," said Ms. Swee Yeok CHU, CEO and President of EDBI. "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."

Seventy-five percent of businesses are forecasted to be digital businesses by 2020***. Many of these organizations are not only faced with the overwhelming cost of migrating to the cloud, but also the complexity of operating in the cloud. Hedvig eliminates storage bottlenecks associated with deploying a cloud strategy. Its Universal Data Plane approach enables businesses to simplify how they scale their virtual data center, efficiently store their primary and secondary data, and begin the shift of their data to the cloud.

"All sectors of enterprise IT are being hit by new demands from the massive wave of emerging digital businesses. It's a wake-up call for the storage industry and a signal that a flexible, simple software-defined storage solution is needed for primary and secondary storage in the era of cloud," said Avinash Lakshman, founder and CEO of Hedvig. "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."

*ReportsnReports, Global Software Defined Storage Market 2016-2020
**KBV Research, Asia-Pacific Software Defined Storage Market
***Gartner, Where Are You On The Digital Business Development Path?