Celonis, a tech startup founded 8 years ago by three college friends, is now worth $2.5 billion

Every startup starts with an idea, a mission and a vision. Most successful startup founders are motivated by creativity and the drive to solve problems or make lives better by developing product or service that could help improve people’s lives. They are great listeners and pay attention to the need and problem around them. That’s the story behind Celonis, a Munich, Germany-based startup that was founded in 2011 by three college friends, Alexander Rinke, Bastian Nominacher, and Martin Klenk, when they were students at the Technical University of Munich. Celonis has been cash flow positive every year since it was founded in 2011 and continues to grow at a triple-digit pace.

Celonis helps organizations optimize their business operations, by using what it calls “process mining” software to find flaws, for example, bottlenecks in supply chains, and eliminating them. Just to give you a glimpse of how big the digital transformation market is, enterprises around the world spend more than $1 trillion annually to integrate digital technology into all areas of a business operations and business processes. As Celonis co-CEO Rinke describes it, “Celonis acts like an MRI for businesses that instantly shows how processes are running and prescribes recommendations for improvements to make processes more efficient, more compliant, and more effective.” Celonis’ process mining technology can accomplish what normally takes consultants weeks or months to finish. Celonis has disrupted the traditional approach to business transformation, which has been a manual, time-consuming, expensive, consultant-driven approach to process optimization.

Today, Celonis announced it has raised approximately $290 million in Series C funding to strengthen its U.S. and global sales and marketing efforts as well as to expand the platform. The round, which was led by Arena Holdings with participation from Accel, 83North, and others, now values the startup at $2.5 billion. To date, the startup has raised a total of $370 million in funding. Founded in 2011 by Alexander Rinke, Bastian Nominacher, and Martin Klenk, Celonis designs an intelligent big data technology that analyze and visualizes every process in a company.

Founded in 2011, Celonis is a New York- and Munich-based leader in enterprise performance acceleration software, turning process insights into action with the process mining technology it pioneered. Its Intelligent Business Cloud allows organizations to rapidly understand and improve the operational backbone of their business. Companies around the world including Siemens, GM, 3M, Airbus and Vodafone rely on Celonis technology to guide action and drive change to business processes, resulting in millions of dollars saved and an improved experience for their customers.

“Celonis is the clear market leader in a category with open-ended potential. It has demonstrated an enviable record of growth and value creation for its customers and partners,” said Feroz Dewan, CEO of Arena Holdings. “Celonis helps companies capitalize on two inexorable trends that cut across geography and industry: the use of data to enable faster, better decision-making and the desire for all businesses to operate at their full potential.”

The Series C funding brings the total investment in Celonis to approximately $370 million following the June 2016 Series A ($27.5 million) and the June 2018 Series B ($50 million) led by Accel and 83North, which also participated in the latest round. The company plans to use the new capital to strengthen its U.S. and global sales and marketing efforts as well as to expand the Celonis platform.

Celonis delivers significant business value by enabling companies to discover inefficiencies across a range of operational functions, act to improve businesses processes in real time and continually monitor them to ensure optimal performance.

“Process Mining performs an X-ray on every operational process, allowing companies to discover inefficiencies and clearly identify recommended actions to streamline processes, save money and improve customer experience,” said Alexander Rinke, co-founder and co-CEO of Celonis. “We are the best in the world at Process Mining and, just as importantly, we are now leading the way in Process Excellence, which is essential to every company’s ability to stay competitive.”

Celonis leverages customers’ multi-billion-dollar legacy IT investments by connecting seamlessly to their existing infrastructure and providing real time control and visibility on process optimization opportunities. Using Celonis, L’Oréal improved their order to cash efficiency rate by three times and are aiming even higher; Lufthansa increased on-time flights for eight million passengers; and Deutsche Telekom saved millions of euros improving processes in payments, purchase orders and deliveries.

“We are gratified by the endorsement from our partners and look forward to working with them as we position Celonis for long-term growth and profitability,” said Bastian Nominacher, co-founder and co-CEO of Celonis. “Their support bolsters our efforts as we build a great and enduring company that has a measurable impact on the success of our customers.”