Canva, the enabler of design on the go, raises $60M, crosses $6Bn valuation

Sydney-based online design platform Canva Pty. Ltd. has secured $60 million in the latest funding round led by Blackbird Ventures and Sequoia Capital China. This brings its valuation to $6 billion. Even the existing investors, Bond, General Catalysts, and Felicis Ventures have doubled down on their existing investments.

Last time Canva raised money was back in October 2019, when they raised $85M in a funding round led by Mary Meeker and Mood Rowghani, general partners at venture capital firm Bond.

Canva aims to use the new funding for its US operations. They’re opening an office in Austin, Texas and the new team will provide support for enterprise and nonprofits clients. As more and more companies shift their work to the ‘new normal’, they’ve realized the need for a more scalable, more collaborative, more affordable, and more user-friendly design platform.

Canva is widely known as a go-to tool for crafting customizable graphic designs for business logos to party invites, and whatnot. The company caters to the need of almost 30 million monthly active users across 190 countries. Since the platform’s commencement, a total of over 3 billion designs have been created through it. Moreover, Canva reported a 50 percent surge in traffic since the start of Covid-19.

Catering to the need of its users, Canva acquired free stock image providers Pexels, Pixabay, and Zeeting in May last year, giving its users the ability to use images provided on these platforms seamlessly.

The original idea for Canva came in 2007 when its founder Perkins was still in the university. He started teaching people Adobe InDesign and Photoshop and found that people were struggling to use them. He then came up with an idea of an online tool to create school yearbooks. They called the business Fusion Books, which is now Australia’s largest school yearbook publisher. From Fusion Books, Perkins and Obrecht went on to build Canva.