A cloud platform for business spending, Coupa offers a fully unified suite of financial applications for business-spend management.

Background:

In the early 2000s, e-procurement software was extremely expensive. In fact, Fortune 500 companies were typically the only companies that could afford or justify such an investment. Aiming to simplify purchasing and e-procurement for small and midsized companies, Coupa was founded in 2006.

Having recognized the large, untapped market Coupa was targeting, Battery eagerly led the company’s series B financing in 2008.

Battery’s Impact:

• Over the next decade of Battery’s involvement with Coupa, Battery aimed to provide value wherever possible. The Battery team served as advisors at each inflection point of the company’s journey, guiding Coupa as it moved up-market and expanded its product offerings to serve companies of all sizes, including enterprise solutions for spend analysis, strategic sourcing, contract management and supplier management, among others.
• Battery helped recruit and/or introduce several key executives to Coupa to foster its growth. For example, in 2009, Battery introduced SuccessFactors executive Rob Bernshetyn, who went on to become Coupa’s CEO and to lead the company through its 2016 IPO, growing the business to a $24 billion market-cap company as of 2020. Other roles Battery helped to hire include the audit committee chair, head of sales and head of marketing.
• Taking a long view, Battery saw the company’s IPO as a milestone — not an outcome — and invested additional capital in Coupa’s IPO, maintaining its commitment as a long-term shareholder. Battery General Partner Neeraj Agrawal was the last of the company’s venture investors to come off the board following the company’s public listing.

Outcome:

Rooted in its origins of helping small- and medium-sized businesses, Coupa now serves companies of all sizes around the world, providing the visibility and control they need to spend smarter and safer. Coupa has been recognized as a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Procure-to-Pay Suites for five consecutive times. Since its 2016 NASDAQ debut, Coupa has increased its market cap by 20 times.