Billion Dollar Unicorns: Apttus Eyeing An IPO

According to Gartner, the Configure Price Quote (CPQ) application suites market is expected to grow 20% annually through 2015 to 2020, driven by the growth in cloud-based solutions. Billion Dollar Unicorn Apttus is a leading player in the space that is toying with the idea of going public yet again.

Apttus’ Journey

Apttus was founded in 2006 by Kirk Krappe, Neehar Giri, and Nathan Krishnan as a cloud-based contract lifecycle management software company, which later evolved into a configure price quote solution to help companies manage and personalize their sales contracts. Apttus was bootstrapped initially and was built on Salesforce.com’s Force.com platform, which kept the development costs low. It was particularly successful with overseas users and within a couple of years, shot to $5 million in revenue.

Today, Apttus’ solutions help improve revenues for organizations through its Quote-to-Cash (QTC), CPQ, Contract Management, E-Commerce, and Revenue Management software solutions. It leverages its Intelligent Cloud platform that maximizes the revenue operation by streamlining and improving business processes, aligning and driving revenue winning behaviors, and recommending relevant, intelligent actions. It integrates process-based applications with modern and innovative behavioral applications including promotions, sales compensation, and rebates to align and drive revenue winning behaviors across all sales channels.

Apttus has amassed a strong following in the market. It claims to have over 600 customers and 1 million users worldwide who are supported by its 1,200 employees, 25 certified consulting partners, and 1000 professional resources.

Apttus’ Competition

While Apttus is a leader in the space, it faces increasing competition from Oracle and Salesforce, which have added quote-to-cash capabilities to their platforms through acquisitions. Oracle acquired BigMachines back in 2013 for an estimated $400 million. At the time of the acquisition, BigMachines was trending at annual revenue rate of just under $60 million. Salesforce is a more recent entrant: it acquired SteelBrick in December 2015 for an estimated $360 million. At the time of the acquisition, SteelBrick was earning annual revenues of $10 million-$25 million.