Global investment firm KKR infused $100 million in integrated business planning solutions provider o9 Solutions bringing its valuation over $1 billion. Chakri Gottemukkala, CEO of o9 Solutions said in a statement, “The funding from KKR will help us accelerate growth across global markets including India. We have 300 people here and will be hiring more people in the next few months.”
o9 Solutions which is based out of the United States has a strong presence in India as it provides planning and operations platform to its enterprise customers such as Walmart, Starbucks and Nestle. In India, the firm works with Asian Paints, some Tata Group companies and Aditya Birla Group.
The company presently employs 500 people globally and has stated that it will continue to hire as the demand increases across all verticals. “India is where we hire world-class development and consulting talent. In the last year, our India team grew by close to 100%. We have onboarded about 100 new people even in the midst of the pandemic. We will continue to hire both experienced professionals and fresher,” Gottemukkala added.
The company provides an artificial intelligence-driven platform which uses data to give companies better visibility into drivers of demand, real-time visibility into risks and opportunities across extended global supply chains and improved quality of forecasts using AI models.
Sanjiv Sidhu and Gottemukkala, executives from i2 Tech co-founded o9 Solutions as a bootstrapped startup and this is the company’s first external funding. o9 Solutions operates across several verticals, including retail, consumer goods, industrial manufacturing, among others.
“Digitization and the rapid advancement of economies in Asia are secular growth themes that KKR has been focused on. Sanjiv and Chakri are industry pioneers who have built a best-in-class team and technology platform for digitally transforming how supply chains and operations are managed.” Jake Heller, Co-head of KKR’s Technology Growth team in the Americas, stated, “We are thrilled to be the first external investor in o9 and to provide the support of our global platform as the team continues to accelerate their growth in Asia.”