o9’s AI-powered Integrated Business Planning platform gained a big boost this week when investment firm KKR took a minority stake in the company, valuing it at over a billion dollars. 09’s platform assists global enterprises with digital transformation and the latest funding will accelerate its’ go-to-market initiatives building on last year’s annual recurring revenue that grew more than 100%.
Chakri Gottemukkala, o9 CEO and Co-Founder, said: “This investment from a global firm of KKR’s caliber is a great validation of the differentiation of the o9 platform, the team we have built, and potential we have for value creation across industry verticals. With KKR’s backing we will be able to accelerate the delivery of our differentiated technology solution to clients across the globe and realize our objective of becoming a category-defining platform for digital transformation of integrated business planning and operations.”
Today the o9 platform is powering the planning and operations of large enterprise clients in many industry verticals such as retail, consumer goods, apparel, consumer electronics, industrial manufacturing, and oil & gas to create next generation planning capabilities that:
- “Create improved visibility into drivers of demand;
- Improve quality of forecasts using AI models;
- Evaluate different commercial actions to close gaps to plan;
- Provide better real-time visibility into risks and opportunities across extended global supply chains; and
- Match demand and supply using intelligent algorithms”.
“As we talk to CxOs, we see that the COVID-19 pandemic has only elevated in their minds the need for accelerated digital transformation of planning and operations capabilities to drive structural improvements in resilience, agility, environmental sustainability, productivity and cost management,” said Sanjiv Sidhu, o9 Chairman and Co-Founder.
A range of trends in e-commerce and digitization, rapidly changing consumer habits, and the heightened uncertainty in the world today are driving the need for the o9 platform, according to the 09 team. The platform provides “faster, smarter and more dynamic planning capabilities for managing global supply chains and operations”.
Jimmy Miele, Principal at KKR, touted what brought about their investment decision, stating, “As we evaluated this investment and spoke to industry participants, what stood out is o9’s reputation for innovation and excellence in execution, as well as the strong endorsements of their technology by blue-chip clients”.
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