Digital transformation has changed the dynamic for customer service and employee management across countless industries, reshaping them from mere support desks and admin functions into a crucial brand touchpoint and means for retaining top talent. This evolution has necessitated businesses, regardless of size or sector, to invest in robust tools that not only resolve issues, but also create loyal relationships.

Global SaaS provider, Freshworks, is meeting these challenges head-on with a product suite that spans a range of functions including customer relation management, IT service management, sales force, and marketing automation solutions, along with a messaging and chat platform. With products that are user-friendly, straightforward, adaptable, and cost-effective, the comprehensive offerings are helping over 63,000 businesses across more than 170 countries connect with their consumers and employees seamlessly, ultimately improving daily operations and communications.

Freshworks prioritizes built-in intelligence and automation to boost efficiency, enabling users to quickly adapt to the rising demands of modern customers and employees, while ensuring the platform delivers a robust return on investment for clients.

Having already achieved a significant global presence, the company continues to consolidate its market position with a strategy focused on product innovation, penetrating emerging markets, and nurturing a robust partner ecosystem. New features that leverage cutting-edge technologies like AI and machine learning are being introduced. At the same time, their global expansion efforts are underscored by localized solutions ensuring cultural and operational relevance. Lastly, their expanding network of partners continues to amplify their reach, enabling businesses worldwide to harness the benefits of the powerful platform.

After being inspired by resentment from Zendesk customers at rising prices for the popular customer support platform, former Zoho Corp colleagues Girish Mathrubootham and Shan Krishnasamy founded Freshdesk in 2010. The company began its journey focusing on cloud-based customer service software solutions.

In its early growth phase, Freshdesk not only developed its own proprietary solutions, it soon added value to its suite of services with acquisitions of 1CLICK.io, Konotor, and Frilp, leading to the launch of Freshsales, a customer relationship management platform.

In a significant rebrand in 2017, the company was officially renamed Freshworks Inc, reflecting a broader vision of products and services beyond just a helpdesk solution. By 2018, Freshworks was reporting an annual recurring revenue of over $100 million. The same year, it also launched Freshworks 360, a comprehensive product suite that combined the power of sales, support, and marketing software together, further solidifying its market position.

In addition to going public in 2019, continuing growth saw Freshworks debut at number 40 on the Forbes Cloud 100 list. It has also maintained impressive year-over-year revenue expansion which now exceeds more than half a billion dollars annually.

Girish Mathrubootham is the CEO and founder of Freshworks. In just over a decade, Girish has taken Freshworks from an idea to a leading software company empowering businesses to delight their customers and employees. Under his leadership, Freshworks has expanded its operations to 13 global locations to serve customers throughout the world. He is also a prominent venture capital investor and adviser to over 60 companies, and a founding member of SaaSBOOMi, Asia’s largest community of founders and product builders.

Freshworks delivers a suite of software solutions for business users across customer experience (CX) and IT service management, along with sales and marketing automation solutions. The suite of products and its appeal encompasses a vast array of sectors and company sizes, from small start-ups to global giants.

Furthermore, the company has pioneered a distinctive approach to delivering business solutions. With a commitment to product-led growth, it has crafted its suite of products that not only attract a diverse range of customers, but also create avenues for sustained expansion. This approach relies heavily on ensuring the user experience is at the forefront, leading to greater user adoption and loyalty.

For customer-facing teams, the CX family of products including Freshchat and Freshdesk simplify and streamline customer support with a centralized dashboard where businesses can manage customer tickets, prioritize issues, and ensure swift and effective resolutions. Its ability to integrate with other channels, like social media and email, makes it an encompassing solution for companies looking to boost their customer service response rates and overall satisfaction scores. In the real world, an online retailer might use Freshdesk to handle customer queries about order statuses, product information, and return requests. Integrated with an inventory system, customer agents can quickly provide updates and solutions. For example, a travel firm may deploy Freshdesk to manage trip cancellations, itinerary changes, or travel advisory updates, providing timely assistance to travelers.

For employee-facing teams, and targeting the specific needs of IT teams, Freshservice provides both the intelligence and automation businesses need to give employees a “consumer” like experience that many now expect. The product ensures that internal technical issues, from hardware malfunctions to software glitches, are tackled promptly. In practice, large universities can track and resolve tech issues for students and staff, from Wi-Fi outages to software installation requests, while a hospital could manage its vast inventory of medical devices, ensuring timely maintenance and addressing malfunctions.

Catering to sales and marketing teams, Freshsales provides CRM software that simplifies lead tracking, streamlines communications, and ensures that businesses can maximize their sales potential. With features like email tracking and advanced analytics, sales teams are equipped to approach leads with more strategic insights. While Freshmarketer delivers a holistic marketing automation solution that enables businesses to craft, manage, and assess campaigns with ease, ensuring that marketing efforts translate into tangible results. Freshsales allows real estate agents to track potential clients, schedule property viewings, and follow-up communications to ensure no lead is overlooked. While with Freshmarketer, a fashion brand can promote a new line, by segmenting their customer base and sending targeted email campaigns, measuring engagement and conversion rates.

Central to Freshworks’ strategy is the simplicity of its products combined with robust functionalities. By offering trial versions of its software, the company allows potential customers to experience firsthand the efficiency of its tools. With pricing that is transparent, affordable, and easy to understand, reducing the length of sales cycles and increasing the efficiency of marketing and sales, it is disrupting the traditional top-down sales motion, letting users, not executives, designate Freshworks as their software of choice.

The company also benefits from a flexible go-to-market approach that allows it to respond to how businesses want to buy its products. For instance, smaller businesses benefit from a low-cost, low-touch model, ensuring efficiency. Meanwhile, larger enterprises, especially specific departments or divisions within them, receive targeted attention, catering to their unique needs. This tiered approach maximizes reach without compromising the quality of service. This approach is proving successful as larger customers continue to fuel growth in the business.

Providing a compelling tailwind, companies today, both big and small, must adapt to the digital era. Larger firms need to become quicker in their decision-making and processes, while smaller firms must provide top-notch service to compete. As robust data is now central to key business decisions, Freshworks has created the Freddy AI Copilot for developers which enables a fast and intuitive app development experience to incorporate machine learning features across all of its products.

The company is steadily scaling towards a multi-billion dollar valuation by further strengthening its position in its three large total addressable markets.

In the IT and employee service space, Freshworks sees significant opportunities to innovate within IT and adjacent spaces, particularly targeting managed service providers, security operations, governance, risk and compliance, as well as government applications. In customer service, it is building upon a history of innovation to provide an all-in-one customer service suite, specific industry, quality, workforce, and agent performance management and training solutions, along with field service management applications. While in the sales and marketing sectors, Freshworks is seeking to create a unified CRM to accelerate growth with its generative Al enhancements, highly personalized experiences, and conversational commerce capabilities.

Also of particular note, India is central to Freshworks’ operations, employing 85% of its global staff, allowing for faster innovation with a cost advantage that enables it to operate more efficiently and compete globally.

Over the last three years, Freshworks has delivered an impressive run of strong double-digit year-over-year growth between 30% and 50% annually. After closing out another record year in 2022, achieving just short of half a billion dollars in revenue, the company has continued this robust trajectory in 2023, again increasing 20% for the first half, hitting $236.1 million for the six months. This was primarily driven by increases in additional agents enabled by customers under their account, sales of products to existing customers, as well as the addition of new customers. In the second quarter, in particular, new generative AI enhancements launched across Freshworks’ product lines outperformed estimates across all of the company’s key financial metrics.

Fortunately, the increase in cost of revenue was far more tempered at only 8%, or $3.7 million for the last six months primarily due to third-party hosting costs and software license fees. Increases in operating expenses were similarly restrained at just 7%, with moderate rises in personnel-related costs due to annual compensation adjustments and changes in stock-based compensation expense, partially offset by a decrease in advertising, marketing, and branding expenses. Consequently, net losses are gradually improving each quarter, now reaching just $35.7 million in the latest period.

Looking ahead, management is forecasting to end FY23 with total revenue of $587 million to $591 million, representing year-over-year growth of 19%, matching consensus expectations. Analysts are also forecasting for full-year earnings per share to improve significantly from a $0.07 loss per share in 2022, turning around to a $0.20 profit in 2023, starting a trend that is expected to return 40% year-over-year improvements in subsequent years.

Freshworks operates in a highly competitive environment. Many companies including giants like Salesforce, Zendesk, Oracle, and ServiceNow, as well as newer entrants like Atlassian offer products and services similar to what Freshworks provides. However, most of these competitors focus on specific areas like customer service, IT management, or sales and marketing.

In addition to providing a more comprehensive suite of solutions that now allows for smart automation and the use of artificial intelligence, Freshworks not only prioritizes the needs of their users, making their products easy to use, but it also ensures that customers quickly see the benefits of using their products. The platform provides a smooth experience and can be tailored for any business, big or small, while offering good value for money with quality at an affordable price.

Freshworks has adeptly navigated the digital transformation era, evolving from a customer service software company to a comprehensive solution provider empowering businesses around the world. Bolstered by user-friendly, adaptable products and strategic innovations, the company’s robust growth trajectory and its unique approach to meeting both customer and employee needs position it as a formidable player amidst heavyweight industry competitors.

The surging demands of urbanization combined with rapid technological advancements have created a vital need for progressive infrastructure solutions in the 21st century.

Sterling Infrastructure specializes in the design, development, and management of advanced infrastructure projects, focusing on three segments that aim to forge a new path forward with environmentally responsible construction, services, and smart solutions for clients in the United States. In recent years, the company has undergone a transformation and expansion beyond heavy civil projects that has broadened its focus and resulted in unprecedented growth.

Now, the company’s E-infrastructure Solutions provide advanced, large-scale site development services for a range of modern and high tech infrastructure requirements. Its Transportation Solutions business includes infrastructure and rehabilitation projects for all manner of road, air, and marine needs. While Building Solutions projects include a vast array of residential and commercial concrete foundation applications.

Its clientele spans a broad spectrum, from local municipalities looking to modernize aging utilities to tech companies seeking cutting-edge facilities for data centers.

While Sterling’s transformation has seen it evolve into the organization it is today, the company continues to execute a strategic vision introduced in 2016. This strategy aims to solidify its historic base business of low-bid heavy highway projects, grow higher margin products and services, and expand into adjacent markets that can strengthen its portfolio, broaden geographic regions, while providing further diversification of cash flows.

In the 1950s, Sterling Heights, Michigan saw the establishment of Oakhurst Company by two brothers, James and Richard Manning. As the years progressed, Oakhurst recognized economic potential in Houston, Texas, and relocated there. Fueled by an economic boom in the region, the company grew into one of Houston’s leading contractors, undertaking significant projects that included the construction of underground drainage and sewage systems, paving, and even light rail infrastructure.

Oakhurst and Steel City Products Inc. joined forces to form Sterling Construction Company Inc, acting as a catalyst for continued growth, culminating in the company going public in 2001.

In the years following, Sterling went on an acquisition spree, purchasing Road and Highway Buildings LLC, followed by Ralph L. Wadsworth in 2009, which firmly positioned the company in the construction arena, being ranked among the top 200 contractors in the U.S.

Banicki, a leading provider of technically advanced, partnership-driven solutions for civil infrastructure, and Tealstone, a market leader in commercial and residential concrete construction, also added to Sterling’s portfolio. While in 2019, Plateau Excavation, the Southeastern U.S.’s premier excavating contractor known for its specialty in large-scale site infrastructure improvement, also joined Sterling’s ranks. Catering to sectors like e-commerce, data centers, and energy, Plateau’s inclusion further strengthened Sterling’s market position.

In an effort to broaden its geographic reach, Sterling made two more strategic acquisitions most recently in 2021, including Petillo, a specialty site development solutions provider active in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions, and Kimes & Stone, a soil stabilization business operating in the Southeast. These acquisitions enhanced Sterling’s e-infrastructure clientele and expanded its capabilities and service offerings.

Recognizing its evolution from its roots as a highway and bridge construction entity to a leader in infrastructure solutions, the company rebranded itself as Sterling Infrastructure in 2022.

Bringing over three decades of deep experience in heavy civil construction, industrial, and water infrastructure markets, Joseph A. Cutillo serves as chief executive officer of Sterling. Since he joined the company in 2015 as VP of Strategy & Business Development, Cutillo has overseen significant strategic transformations, acquisitions, and the expansion of the company’s service portfolio. His understanding of the industry’s market dynamics and strategic foresight have been instrumental in cementing Sterling’s position as a leading infrastructure solutions provider. Prior to Sterling, he was president and CEO of Inland Pipe Rehabilitation, and he also currently serves on multiple company boards.

In a rapidly evolving urban and digital environment, infrastructure solutions now need to bridge the gap between physical development and e-infrastructure, while ensuring the seamless integration of transportation systems that can handle exploding populations. Sterling has firmly positioned itself as a pioneer in catering to these multifaceted demands, offering an extensive suite of capabilities across its three business units:

E-Infrastructure Solutions: provides large-scale specialty site infrastructure improvement contracting services, including site selection and preparation for next-generation manufacturing, data centers, e-commerce distribution, warehousing, and energy sectors, among others. As its fastest-growing and most profitable segment, E-infrastructure is playing a critical role in Sterling’s strategic growth goals. Partnering with clients from site selection through to turnkey construction, the company is large enough to manage the most complex site development projects, yet nimble enough to handle smaller ones avoided by bigger construction companies.

Transportation Solutions: focuses on infrastructure and rehabilitation projects for highways, roads, bridges, airports, ports, light rail, water, waste, and storm drainage systems. With core customers including the Departments of Transportation in various states, regional transit, airport, port, and water authorities, and railroads, the business benefits heavily from federal and state infrastructure spending. Moreover, a growing focus on alternative delivery and aviation solutions is achieving higher margins and better returns.

Building Solutions: delivers residential and commercial concrete foundations for single-family and multi-family homes, parking structures, elevated slabs, and other concrete work. It is also a fast-growing and highly profitable sector enabling the company’s strategic growth, as partnerships with the country’s top home builders have fueled expansion into lucrative markets across the U.S.

Sterling has strategically positioned itself for sustained growth, aiming to capitalize on emerging market trends and evolving infrastructure needs. Historically, Sterling’s base was the low-bid heavy highway projects within its Transportation Solutions segment. However, recognizing the limitation on margin expansion in such a competitive bidding environment, the company began a major transformation in 2016. By enhancing bid discipline to curtail project losses, Sterling has adopted a more risk-averse stance, laying the foundation for a more profitable future.

By progressively reducing its dependence on low-bid heavy highway projects, which once comprised nearly 79% of its revenue, Sterling has judiciously targeted higher-margin projects. By December 2022, revenue from low-bid projects was just 11%, with a marked emphasis on projects in alternative domains like airports, commercial sites, piling, and shoring, boasting gross margins between 12% and 15%.

Expansion through strategic acquisitions is also of particular focus as it continues to identify opportunities for growth in adjacent markets. Its decentralized and adaptive business model offers the agility required for such endeavors and has been key in successfully executing the acquisition spree it has undertaken in recent years. With four major additions, among others, in the last six years, Sterling’s geographic footprint, broadened customer base, service offerings, and capabilities have gone from strength to strength and vastly helped diversify its cash flows.

On the economic front, funding from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act is providing an ideal backdrop. More than $65 billion in investment is being contributed to growth and demand for data centers, manufacturing, and distribution centers within the E-infrastructure space. Benefitting its Transportation Solutions business, the Infrastructure Bill has allocated a staggering $643 billion for transportation programs and an additional $25 billion for airports over the next half-decade. Coupled with $185 billion in IIJA funding for over 7,000 transportation projects announced in 2022, Sterling is strategically placed to benefit from these federal initiatives. While the Building Solutions segment is poised to harness the favorable demand dynamics in its operating geographies, as 2023 is showing a resurgence in housing starts, complemented by growth in multifamily residential sectors, and significant market share gain opportunities.

Other ongoing secular trends, such as the resurgence in domestic manufacturing capacity, the exponential growth in data demands, and the burgeoning investments in e-commerce and manufacturing development, are also positioning Sterling favorably in the market.

Sterling’s transformation efforts have delivered a marked improvement in the company’s growth since 2016, culminating in a record total revenue of $1.77 billion in 2022. All three business units continue to see revenue growth and operating margin expansion in 2023, as strong customer demand and excellent execution have management forecasting to close the year out with revenue of $1.95 billion to $2.05 billion.

E-Infrastructure Solutions are being supported by large, multi-phase next-generation manufacturing and data center projects. The Transportation Solutions business is reflecting solid demand trends across key geographies and a continued mix shift toward higher margin work. While Building Solutions is being driven by a record number of residential slabs poured and higher levels of commercial work.

The company’s gross profits are also improving dramatically, delivering double-digit increases for the last three years in a row driven by higher volume, improved project margin mix across all segments, and an improving supply chain. Far more tempered growth in Sterling’s operating costs has also resulted in delivering its highest-ever net profit in 2022 of $106.5 million.

Looking ahead, in line with management forecasts, consensus estimates have Sterling achieving $2.0 billion in sales, representing year-over-year growth of 13% for FY23. Also in line with management expectations for earnings per share at $4.00 to $4.20 per share, analysts are forecasting EPS to improve by 17% to $4.09 per share.

Sterling operates in a diverse and dynamic construction environment where competition encompasses a spectrum ranging from nimble local contractors to behemoth international construction conglomerates. Sterling has crafted a niche for itself, focusing on projects that fall between the scales catered to by small local contractors and large international firms. This distinct positioning allows Sterling to harness opportunities that might be deemed too substantial for the smaller entities, yet not sizable enough to allure the large-scale companies.

In less favorable market conditions, there might be an influx of both the small local contractors and the bigger players into Sterling’s chosen middle ground which could put competitive pressures on bidding, in turn, constricting revenue growth and depressing margins.

However, unlike the smaller local players, Sterling boasts a scale that enables it to take on more substantial projects. Conversely, it retains a level of nimbleness that some of its larger competitors might lack, allowing it to be more adaptive and responsive in bidding for medium-scale projects. By maintaining this delicate balance, Sterling endeavors to carve out a defensible space in a turbulent market landscape.

Sterling’s successful transformation from a focused construction company to a leader in modern infrastructure solutions could not be more apparent. Hallmarked by rapid growth and a favorable outlook supported by robust public funding and several secular trends, its success looks well-placed to continue strongly.

Over the last decade, we have welcomed more and more digital services and products into our lives and integrated them into nearly every activity we take part in. Consequently, personalized customer experiences where businesses engage with consumers seamlessly across various platforms and touchpoints have become increasingly important.

Braze is servicing this growing need with its leading customer engagement platform that facilitates interactions between consumers and brands to build and maintain direct, meaningful relationships with their customers. The platform empowers brands to listen to their customers better, understand them more deeply, and act on that understanding in a way that is human and personal. It offers a suite of tools ranging from messaging channels and AI-driven analytics to campaign creation and optimization, all geared towards fostering genuine and timely interactions.

Whether it’s e-commerce giants keen on optimizing shopping experiences, travel agencies wanting to offer timely deals, or fintech firms focusing on personalized financial advice, Braze’s solutions cater to a vast array of use cases. The technology provides brands the flexibility to adapt and engage based on user behaviors, preferences, and real-time data, making it a go-to solution for industries striving for contextual and personalized user interactions.

With a strategy defined by relentless innovation, the company continues its expansion into newer markets, deeper integration capabilities with other tech ecosystems, and a steadfast commitment to enhancing the user experience. Using these focused strategies, Braze aims to further solidify its position as the preferred choice for brands looking to elevate their customer engagement game in the modern environment.

Braze was founded in 2011 in response to the major step change ushered in by the smartphone. Bill Magnuson, Jon Hyman, and Mark Ghermezian created Braze (formerly known as Appboy) as a response to the evolving mobile landscape and the need for more effective, real-time, and personalized customer engagement. They identified that the crux of modern marketing was moving beyond mere audience segmentation and into truly individualized messaging, which the trio felt was lacking in the current market.

The early days of Braze focused primarily on mobile app engagement. Initial traction was moderate, but as businesses began to recognize the importance of personalized, real-time communication, Braze’s user-centric, data-driven platform found its fit. By 2014, the company had grown its user base substantially and was managing billions of messages per month.

Recognizing the need for flexibility in the tech ecosystem, Braze soon expanded its capabilities beyond mobile. By 2016, the company had introduced various new channels, including email, web messaging, and in-product messaging. Integration capabilities with other tech platforms like Segment, Amplitude, and Mixpanel also started taking shape.

As the company expanded its footprint setting up offices around the world, Braze underwent a rebranding from its original name, Appboy, signaling a broader shift from a mobile-centric vision to a comprehensive, holistic approach to customer engagement across all digital touchpoints.

Braze went public in 2021 after its IPO raised half a billion dollars. The company has continued to enhance its product suite, introducing features harnessing AI and machine learning to offer predictive analytics, customer journey optimization, and more.

Co-founder Bill Magnuson still serves as Braze’s chairman and CEO. Under his leadership, Braze has witnessed exponential growth as he has been instrumental in evolving the company from its early mobile-centric roots to a leading global customer engagement platform. Magnuson’s visionary approach as both CEO and previously CTO has consistently steered Braze towards innovative solutions. Prior to Braze, Magnuson was a software engineer with both Bridgewater Associates and Google.

Fellow co-founder Jon Hyman is also still with Braze as CTO, taking on the position in 2017 following his role as CIO since the company began. Hyman has overseen the platform’s seamless scalability, enabling it to handle tens of billions of messages per month while ensuring data integrity and real-time engagement. He also worked at Bridgewater Associates, where he gained insights into building large-scale, high-performance systems.

Braze’s platform helps brands to build lasting relationships with their consumers in a dynamic digital environment. This has been achieved through a comprehensive suite of tools that focuses on real-time, data-driven, and highly personalized interactions.

Most cross-channel marketing automation platforms available approach customer engagement on a channel-by-channel basis, which creates disjointed customer experiences and diminishes customer loyalty. Braze was built on the premise that brands must create personal and human connections with consumers through the consistent delivery of positive customer experiences.

Using the platform, brands ingest and process customer data in real-time and then orchestrate and optimize contextually relevant, marketing campaigns across multiple channels. This avoids the data and engagement silos that marketing point solutions create so that each touchpoint across channels and platforms is aware of other engagement events and can react to that activity in real-time.

In addition to a comprehensive backend of management, customization, and monitoring functionalities, at the heart of Braze lies its messaging capabilities, which allow brands to reach out to their consumers through a myriad of channels, including email, push notifications, in-app and web messages, and more. This approach ensures that customers receive messages at the right time, on the right platform, and in the most engaging manner.

Beyond messaging, Braze offers a rich suite of analytics tools that are powered by AI. These provide actionable insights into customer behavior, allowing businesses to tailor their strategies for maximum effectiveness. With tools like Canvas Flow, brands can tap into real-time data flow and make instant adjustments to their campaigns based on performance metrics. This enables brands to design customer journeys that are not only personalized, but also react dynamically based on individual behaviors and data. With this, businesses can map out intricate, multi-step campaigns across various channels, ensuring that every customer interaction is meaningful and timely.

Recognizing that businesses operate within vast tech ecosystems, Braze Currents seamlessly integrates customer data with other tools, including data warehouses, analytics platforms, and other marketing tech stacks to ensure customers can deliver a holistic experience.

From Pizza Hut to HBO to Venmo, Braze’s diverse customer base can use the platform to deliver personalized welcome messages to new customers, celebrate milestones, inform of new products and services, and inspire new usage, ultimately creating vastly more growth opportunities.

Businesses are increasingly recognizing the power of personalized communication and real-time interaction, consequently, Braze has and is positioning itself to cater to these nuanced needs with its sophisticated capabilities. Future growth opportunities are heavily leveraging development in AI-driven customer engagement particularly using first-party data. For several years, Braze has already had dedicated teams of data engineers and data scientists, focused on using machine learning to build AI into its product, to make marketers more effective and engage their end users by optimizing customer journeys, generating more relevant content, and enhancing targeting strategies.

The company debuted a GPT integration for email subject line generation over a year ago and was early to integrate generative AI for images into the message composition experience, launching a dashboard integration last December. More recently, it also launched a message content-checking tool, built on top of GPT4, helping marketers to avoid copyrighting mistakes, the accidental sending of text messages, or sending culturally insensitive content. Ultimately, lowering the burden of content creation encourages customers to bring new use cases into the Braze platform more quickly.

As companies become more data-driven, the need for granular segmentation, tailored reporting, and deriving actionable insights from their vast datasets will only intensify. Braze is also testing a wide array of new capabilities including generating SQL for advanced segmentation and reporting use cases, automatically suggesting improvements to message copy during composition, and even an adversarial AB testing simulator that the company believes may be able to generate and predict winning message variants for populations before a campaign is even launched. This capability can allow businesses to refine their strategies even before implementation, thereby ensuring higher success rates and ROI.

Braze’s proprietary, enterprise-grade stream processing architecture is enabling the company to exploit real-time interactions, and in turn, the emerging trends of real-time first-party data collection and integration of messaging within product experiences. This, coupled with Braze’s educational endeavors, can help onboard businesses that are in the early stages of adopting modern customer engagement practices.

Moreover, while expanding the use of the Braze platform with existing customers by adding new channels and increasing the messaging volume its sells remain key pillars of the company’s growth strategy, smoothing the on-ramp for new customers is a key part of ensuring that the differentiation presented by Braze’s sophisticated capabilities remains accessible to its ever-growing market. Even to those who are early in their journey of adopting the modern practice of customer engagement.

Since going public, Braze has maintained an impressive trajectory in revenue growth, delivering its third consecutive year-over-year increase of around 50% in FY23. This continuing trend saw revenue reach $355.4 million for the year, up from $238.0 million in FY22. This uptick is attributed to a substantial influx of new customers, robust upsells, and consistent renewals. The opening quarter of FY24 also started strongly with revenue of $101.8 million also including new business wins and upsells from the likes of Procore Technologies, Sonos, Sweetgreen, and Swimply.

Braze’s robust growth has not come without solid increases in sales and marketing, R&D, and general and administrative expenses, which rose by 63% to $387.7 million in FY23. The company is heavily focused on expansion and while net losses increased by more than 81% to $140.7 million, its successful IPO raised $467.9 million and issued close to nine million shares, resulting in a marked improvement in losses on a per share basis.

Looking ahead, Braze’s management is forecasting to close out FY24 with total revenue of $442.5 to $446.5 million, in line with consensus expectations for year-over-year growth of 25%. Earnings per share are also forecasted to continue its positive trend, going from a loss of $0.64 to a loss of just $0.51, marking a 20% improvement year-over-year.

Braze faces intense competition from software companies that offer marketing solutions, such as legacy marketing clouds like Adobe and Salesforce, and point solutions like Airship, Iterable, Leanplum (Clevertap), MailChimp (Intuit), and MoEngage.

In some cases, these companies benefit from greater name recognition and resources, longer histories, lower costs, and more mature intellectual property portfolios. Larger competitors, in particular, may use their broader offerings to bundle products with other functions or even close access to their technology platform, making it more difficult for customers to integrate other platforms. In addition, these competitors may have an advantage in markets where Braze’s policies regarding the use of customer data are more restrictive than local laws. For example, competitors willing to sell customer data in markets where such activity is permissible may have a pricing advantage over Braze in such markets.

However, while several established and emerging competitors address specific aspects of customer engagement, Braze believes that none of these market participants currently offer comparable comprehensive customer engagement solutions.

As more businesses pivot towards automating and optimizing their marketing campaigns, Braze’s tools are becoming indispensable for crafting relevant, engaging, and timely content. Its intelligent, real-time, and personalized interactions are setting the gold standard for future-oriented customer engagement.

The travel industry has seen a seismic shift over the past few decades, with consumers leaning heavily into online platforms to curate personalized, cost-effective, and convenient travel experiences.

Based in India, MakeMyTrip, has become a digital travel juggernaut catering to the burgeoning demands of the modern traveler. Launched in 2000, the company has transformed how people in India and beyond approach trip planning, offering services that encompass flight bookings, hotel reservations, holiday packages, and rail and bus tickets. In addition, it now provides a suite of complementary services including car hire, activities and experiences, and other ancillary travel requirements such as insurance products, foreign currency exchange, and even visa processing.

MakeMyTrip’s technology platforms now allow customers to choose from hundreds of thousands of hotels and properties around the world, leveraging promotional rates offered simultaneously by multiple travel operators in order to meet the requirements of the growing Indian middle-class travel market. The company’s platform caters to a diverse array of users, from solo backpackers to corporate travelers, as tech professionals scout for business accommodations, families plan leisurely vacations, or event managers book large venues for gatherings. MakeMyTrip’s user-friendly interface, coupled with its vast array of choices, makes it a go-to for users from different walks of life, whether they are organizing a quick weekend getaway or a multi-country tour.

From its nascent days as a start-up to its position as a dominant player in the online travel market, MakeMyTrip’s trajectory has been driven by the company’s recognition of a tech-savvy and evolving user base. It continually refines its platform, aiming for a more intuitive user experience and expanded service offerings. Simultaneously, the company is forging ahead with strategic alliances, tapping into newer markets, and leaning into data analytics to better anticipate and cater to user preferences.

MakeMyTrip was founded in 2000 by Deep Kalra and Rajesh Magow. It initially commenced operations with a focus on the non-resident Indian market in the United States, servicing the demand for air tickets. Although online travel bookings were in their infancy in India during the early 2000s, a rapidly growing internet-savvy population presented a lucrative opportunity. Seizing this, MakeMyTrip pivoted its focus to the domestic Indian market in 2005.

Starting with the launch of the Indian MakeMyTrip website, the company targeted Indian leisure and corporate travelers with services and travel products who preferred to make their own arrangements. What started as a flight booking service soon sprawled into a plethora of other travel offerings. By 2008, hotel bookings and rail tickets joined MakeMyTrip’s portfolio, and the company’s user base began to grow exponentially.

Recognizing the versatility of the digital space, MakeMyTrip started introducing other nuanced travel products. Bus bookings, holiday packages, and even cab services became part of the ever-growing product portfolio. Strategic collaborations with hotels, both premium and budget, and integrations with various transport services solidified its position as India’s go-to online travel agency.

In 2010, the company went public, with a debut on the NASDAQ, whilst also beginning its foray into international territories, setting its sights on the Southeast Asian market. Acquisitions soon followed with notable purchases including the likes of Thailand-based ITC Group in 2011 and the UAE’s Holiday Tours & Travel in 2012.

As smartphone penetration surged in India, MakeMyTrip was swift to adapt. Launching its mobile application in the early 2010s, it saw an influx of users preferring the convenience of mobile bookings. This transition led to MakeMyTrip pushing the boundaries even further, offering last-minute hotel bookings and exclusive deals for app users.

2016 was also a transformative year as MakeMyTrip merged with the Ibibo Group, another prominent name in the Indian online travel industry. This strategic move combined the strengths of brands like Goibibo, redBus, and Ryde under the MakeMyTrip umbrella, significantly expanding its user base and consolidating its market position.

By 2021, with the evolving dynamics of the travel industry, especially post-pandemic, MakeMyTrip began integrating AI and machine learning capabilities. These tools provided users with personalized travel recommendations, enhanced customer service experiences, and real-time updates, ensuring that MakeMyTrip was not just a booking platform, but a comprehensive travel companion.

Deep Kalra and Rajesh Magow are still with MakeMyTrip, serving as chairman and CEO respectively. In his current role, Kalra is involved in business strategy, policy issues, and inorganic growth opportunities, as well as representing the company in various industry forums and with the government. He is also the co-chair of the Confederation of Indian Industry’s National Committee on Tourism and Hospitality, and the vice chairman of the World Travel and Tourism India Chapter. In addition, he serves on several industry and public service boards. Kalra has also been recognized by Ernst & Young as Entrepreneur of the Year and as the most powerful Digital influencer in India by KPMG.

While Rajesh Magow has played a crucial role in multiple landmark events of MakeMyTrip over the years, including its listing on the NASDAQ and the merger of MakeMyTrip and Ibibo group. Most recently, he played a pivotal role in ensuring the company bounced back from the covid pandemic. He also serves on several industry boards and has received multiple industry awards, including being recognized by The Economic Times Human Capital Awards as the People-Focused CEO of the Year and Bloomberg’s Best CFO Award.

MakeMyTrip has been a forerunner in transforming the travel domain, creating a suite of products catering to the diverse needs of the modern-day traveler under the MakeMyTrip, Goibibo, and redBus brands, among others.

The platform provides a seamless interface for flight bookings. Be it domestic flights darting across the Indian subcontinent or international escapades, MakeMyTrip offers a wide array of options that cater to the budget traveler, the luxury seeker, and everyone in between. Customers can quickly and easily evaluate a broad range of potential fares and airline combinations through user-friendly websites. While the hotel booking segment presents a spectrum of accommodations, from luxury resorts to budget stays, coupled with alternate accommodations, which include villas, apartments, hostels, homestays, and cottages.

For those seeking more than just flights and accommodations, curated holiday packages encompass flights, hotels, sightseeing, and even meals, providing a holistic travel experience. These packages also include various travel services such as facilitating access to travel and other insurance products from third-party insurers, visa processing, airport transfer, and sightseeing. In addition, a Meetings, Incentives, Conferences and Exhibitions team offers services to organizations and other groups with planning meetings, conferences, weddings, trips, or other events.

For ground travelers, the platform’s bus and cab booking services facilitate easy commutes, both inter- and intra-city. While MakeMyTrip’s rail booking section simplifies the often-complex Indian Railways reservation system, ensuring users can secure their train seats with ease. Most recently, redBus also began offering domestic and international ferry tickets in Malaysia and Singapore.

Breaking into fintech in 2021, the TripMoney platform connects customers in India to various lenders that offer short-term credit lines to travelers. TripMoney acquired a majority interest in Book My Forex, which offers currency exchange, prepaid forex cards, cross-border remittances, as well as other ancillary products to Indians traveling abroad.

Customers can also access real-time updates, reviews, and ratings to make informed choices, along with several tools like travel calculators and itinerary generators. MakeMyTrip’s ease of use, combined with robust features like 24/7 customer support, security, and transparency, has made it a household name for online travel.

India is the most populous country in the world, yet it has an under-penetrated market for travel. The propensity and willingness to travel is steadily increasing, fueled by a growing Indian middle class. Furthermore, a growing base of more than half a billion internet and smartphone users, coupled with the country’s rapid drive towards digital adoption by its young population provides MakeMyTrip with significant growth opportunities.

The company’s hotels and packages business generally yields higher margins than its air ticketing business, consequently, MakeMyTrip intends to continue shifting its business mix towards this segment. Building on the acquisition of the Goibibo business, automation and adoption of new technologies are key investments to enable more hotel suppliers to seamlessly connect to the company’s various platforms. The company also intends to grow its package business outside India through strategic partnerships and acquisitions, as well as by strengthening relationships with key aggregators from whom it procures inventory for package products.

Expanding service and product offerings remains an important mechanism of customer acquisition, as well as a means to cross-sell higher-margin services and products. In recent years, the additions of bus and rail tickets, experiences, activities, and ancillary services have vastly enhanced user satisfaction. As a result, MakeMyTrip continues to expand options for alternative accommodation, activities and experiences, and multi-modal transportation offerings across regions.

New overseas markets are of particular focus for MakeMyTrip, particularly those with a significant non-resident Indian population and popular regional destinations that are located within a five-hour flight from India. The company has already made strides developing multilingual content and vernacular search-optimized pages following launches in the UAE and GCC countries, along with progress in Southeast Asia and South America following its acquisitions of the ITC Group and ibibo Group, respectively.

Activity in the GCC has extended to the recent launch of the myPartner B2B2C platform where MakeMyTrip offers both flight and accommodation bookings via partners, which now stand at close to 40,000 and are expanding each quarter. In addition, the company is increasing its focus on gaining a greater share of the corporate travel wallet as new capabilities such as automated integration to multiple HRMS and Expense Management platforms reduce onboarding time for corporates and simplify overall travel and expense management for employees.

MakeMyTrip has embarked on an impressive recovery from the covid pandemic. The company delivered its highest-ever annual gross bookings which more than doubled to a record $6.6 billion for the full year backed by robust travel demand and an evident uptick in consumer sentiment. This ultimately translated into an impressive 96% increase in total revenue of $560.4 million. The positive trend has continued in FY24 as gross bookings increased a further 80% year-over-year to $1.7 billion for the first quarter, delivering its strongest period ever, coupled with the third consecutive quarter of net profits.

Despite operating in a market fraught with macroeconomic challenges and seasonal fluctuations, profitability expansion was also strong, surging by 203% year-over-year to the highest ever in the company’s history, reaching $70.3 million for FY23. While in the first quarter of FY24, the company reported a profit of $18.6 million, in stark contrast to the loss of $10.0 million in the comparative FY23 period.

Looking ahead, consensus estimates have MakeMyTrip growing sales at a steady 20% to 24% over the next three years, delivering total revenue of $805.1 million for FY24. While analysts are also forecasting for full-year earnings per share to improve significantly from a $0.10 loss per share in 2023, turning around to a $0.60 profit in 2024.

The market for travel services and products is highly competitive. MakeMyTrip competes with established and emerging providers of travel services and products, including other online travel agencies such as Easemytrip.com, Airbnb.co.in, Booking.com, Expedia.com, traditional travel agencies, tour operators, travel suppliers and intermediaries that provide travel services. Internet search engines have also launched applications offering travel itineraries in destinations around the world, as meta-search companies can aggregate vast databases of travel search results.

A significant market development is the endeavor of travel suppliers to create direct online demand on their platforms. Airlines, particularly low-cost carriers, have been keen on either minimizing or sidestepping third-party distributors like MakeMyTrip. By directly wooing consumers through loyalty programs or eliminating processing fees, these suppliers challenge online travel agencies’ value propositions.

However, amidst this heavy competition, MakeMyTrip has built robust brand recognition, while its comprehensive service and product offerings, spanning from hotel bookings to full-fledged vacation packages, ensure that customers find a one-stop solution for their travel needs. In addition, the company’s broad distribution network, both online and offline, ensures that it maintains touchpoints with a variety of consumer segments.

MakeMyTrip has decisively transformed the travel landscape in India, rising from its humble beginnings to becoming the premier digital travel platform in the region. Capitalizing on the rapid digital adoption and growing middle class, it offers an all-encompassing range of services. The company’s adeptness in recognizing market shifts and proactively integrating cutting-edge technologies continue to set it apart even in a fiercely competitive domain.

As IT administrators grapple with more data, coming from more places, more connected devices, and more software-as-a-service based applications, the cloud is fundamental to establishing a new normal. Traditional network offerings are not well-suited to fulfill enterprise expectations for rapid delivery of new services, more flexible business models, real-time response, and massive scalability.

Extreme Networks is servicing this ever-increasing demand as a leading provider of end-to-end, cloud-driven networking solutions, services, and support covering the spectrum of needs from the Internet of Things edge to the cloud. Extreme designs, develops, and manufactures wired and wireless network infrastructure equipment, as well as a leading cloud networking platform and applications portfolio using machine learning and artificial intelligence to deliver network policy, analytics, security, and access controls. Importantly, its solutions enable companies to embrace the value of new cloud technology without having to decommission and replace existing infrastructures.

Extreme has been pushing the boundaries of networking technology for a quarter of a century, delivering flexibility and scalability in the deployment, management, and licensing of networks globally. Its broad footprint provides service to over 50,000 customers and over 10 million daily end users within some of the world’s leading names in business, across a multitude of industries and verticals.

With exposure to the fastest-growing areas of the networking market and new use cases providing ample opportunities to drive growth long-term, Extreme is continuing to leverage the strength of its unique solutions in the enterprise market.

Extreme Networks was founded in 1996 in California, by Gordon Stitt, Herb Schneider, and Stephen Haddock. The three of them were driven by the conviction that open, standards-based networking would fuel the next generation of technology and innovation. In its nascent stages, the company emphasized high-performance, top-tier products which enabled them to rapidly garner attention from businesses seeking robust networking solutions.

By the early 2000s, they expanded their product line to encompass a range of switches and routers, catering to various scales of business needs. Several acquisitions including Enterasys Networks and Aerohive Networks, along with distinct business units from the likes of Zebra Technologies, Brocade, and Avaya among others, helped Extreme expand its range and market reach, broadening its network infrastructure capabilities, especially in wireless technologies, and software-driven cloud solutions.

In recent years, as the tech world increasingly leverages artificial intelligence, Extreme has been no exception with additions such as ExtremeCloud IQ adding AI-driven network solutions, automation, and IoT integrations.

Ed Meyercord has served as Extreme’s president and chief executive officer since 2015 during which time he has led multiple strategic acquisitions, a pivot towards cloud-based solutions, and substantial financial growth. His tenure with the company goes back to 2009 having previously held both director and chairman roles with the board. Prior to assuming an operating role at Extreme, Meyercord was CEO and director at Critical Alert Systems LLC, a software-driven, healthcare information technology company that he co-founded in 2010. He also served as CEO, president and director of the communications services companies, Cavalier Telephone & TV and Talk America Inc. Meyercord was also a vice president in the investment banking division of Salomon Brothers, which became part of Citigroup.

While as chief technology and product officer, Nabil Bukhara leads the vision, strategy, and delivery of Extreme’s portfolio. Bukhara joined Extreme as part of the acquisition of Brocade following key leadership roles at various companies including Cisco, Seagate, SonicWall, and Riverstone Networks. He has more than 20 years of experience within the technology sector and is a global authority in portfolio strategy. He frequently speaks at international summits and writes columns for well-known publishers about the role of technologies like machine learning and artificial intelligence in networking.

Extreme offers a diverse range of cutting-edge networking products and services designed to foster seamless connectivity, enhanced security, and unrivaled performance. The end-to-end portfolio of cloud-driven solutions provides visibility, control, and strategic intelligence from the edge to the data center, across networks and applications. Solutions include wired and wireless switching, wireless access points, WLAN controllers, routers, and an extensive portfolio of software applications that deliver AI-enhanced access control, network and application analytics.

Extreme’s flagship offering, ExtremeCloud IQ, provides a centralized platform to orchestrate and manage network infrastructure. The platform is designed for agility, enabling IT teams to monitor, analyze, and make data-driven decisions in real time. Through the use of AI and machine learning, it offers predictive insights, ensuring any potential network issues are mitigated before they escalate.

Boasting one of the industry’s most comprehensive wireless portfolios, Extreme’s access point solutions are proven in some of the most demanding environments, powering large venues and stadiums as the Official Wi-Fi & Analytics Provider for the NFL and the MLB. While its wired solutions enable the deployment of high-speed performance at scale for high-density, campus, and data center environments, catering to a variety of speeds and connectivity options.

The breadth and adaptability of Extreme’s product portfolios have its customers ranging from small businesses to sprawling enterprises across various sectors. Educational institutions leverage Extreme’s networking solutions to offer students seamless digital experiences. Healthcare providers depend on their robust network infrastructures to access critical patient data in real time. While retail giants employ Extreme’s solutions to ensure smooth transactions and personalized customer experiences. Moreover, the versatility of Extreme’s products allows them to integrate seamlessly with a variety of other platforms and systems, ensuring that organizations can extract the maximum potential from their existing IT ecosystems.

5G is the first generation of cellular technologies built on cloud-native principles, and most traditional network visibility tools cannot be easily adapted for future use cases like autonomous vehicles or industrial IoT, therefore would normally require expensive, time-consuming infrastructure upgrades. However, Extreme has introduced switches and related software with cloud-native design to provide customers with full visibility into every aspect of the network, from a highly geographically dispersed environment with regions and zones to the services running on the system.

Extreme also provides an extensive list of service and support offerings. They maintain global Technical Assistance Centers that provide round-the-clock technical support, premier support services for more proactive management, professional services for personalized network solutions, and comprehensive education and training programs to ensure customers and partners derive maximum value and understanding from Extreme’s products.

Modern enterprises are navigating a rapidly changing IT landscape. The escalating demand to implement new IT delivery models and applications is necessitating significant network modifications, extending from the outermost access edge to the heart of the data center. The covid pandemic also amplified the need for IT teams to gain unprecedented control and insights, to be not just secure, but also maintain smooth operations. With a torrent of data streaming from a myriad sources, a multitude of connected devices, and a surge in SaaS applications, the cloud is the foundation of a new operational paradigm. Conventional network offerings are struggling to meet enterprise expectations for swift service deliveries, agile business models, instantaneous responses, and vast scalability.

Extreme has strategically positioned itself, leveraging its technology to orchestrate distributed network architectures. Notably, the cloud networking segment, which the company currently estimates at $2 billion, is forecasted to be the industry’s fastest-growing segment. Extreme’s cloud offering stands out for its robustness, versatility, intelligence, and security, from the cloud’s vantage point. It has seamlessly simplified network adjustments to enable clients to transition to cloud-managed switching and Wi-Fi, and thanks to its “Cloud Choice” philosophy, agnostic of the existing networking or wireless equipment they already have installed. The outcomes for these enterprises are compelling with reduced operating and capital expenditures, a slashed total cost of ownership, amplified flexibility, and bolstered network resilience.

Machine learning and artificial intelligence technologies are also emerging as pivotal. By harnessing vast datasets across capable infrastructure, organizations can enhance accuracy and deliver resolutions that elevate network operations. This potential is further magnified when integrated with cloud-driven networking and automation, as it empowers administrators to swiftly scale, ensuring productivity, accessibility, security, and speed across even the most distributed networks. Extreme’s cloud management technology has evolved significantly over the past decade, delivering a combination of innovation and reliability with the leading end-to-end cloud management platforms powered by ML and AI.

Extreme estimates its total addressable market for enterprise networking solutions spanning cloud networking, wireless, campus, software-defined local area networks, data center networking, and ethernet switching solutions at $26 billion, growing at five percent annually over the forthcoming years. While the company’s uniquely crafted products, solutions, services, and geographical focus positions it to tap into $16 billion of this market. In addition, the emergence of 5G is expected to carve out an additional estimated market worth $3 billion for service provider networking, a segment that Extreme is targeting to grow to approximately $50-$100 million per year over the next three to five years.

Over the past decade, Extreme has been delivering a robust record of revenue growth. FY23 marked the second consecutive year of double-digit increases with total revenue again hitting a new record after reaching $1.3 billion following an 18% improvement. The increase was driven by strong demand for Extreme’s products and higher shipments resulting from an easing in supply chain constraints which had impacted the company’s ability to fulfill the demand, along with modest growth in the subscription business.

Record profitability and cash generation also headlined Extreme’s latest results as gross margins improved significantly to 59% for FY23. The company also established a net cash position of $10 million after doubling cash generation, and even repurchasing $100 million worth of shares, and paying down $80 million in debt, putting the year-end balance sheet in its most robust financial position ever.

Looking ahead, consensus estimates have Extreme growing sales in 2024 by 15% to $1.51 billion. Analysts are also forecasting for full-year earnings per share to improve by 43% to $1.55 per share in 2024, followed by a further 28% improvement to $1.99 in 2025.

The market for network switches, routers, and software including analytics is extremely competitive and characterized by rapid technological progress, frequent new product introductions, changes in customer requirements, and evolving industry standards.

Extreme competes directly with giants including Cisco Systems, Hewlett-Packard, Huawei, and Arista Networks among others. It also expects to face increased competition from both traditional networking solutions and cloud platform companies offering Infrastructure-as-a-Service and Platform-as-a-Service products to enterprise offering from the likes of Amazon, Microsoft, and Google providing a cloud-based platform of data center compute and networking services for enterprise customers.

However, Extreme’s competitive advantage lies in its innovative end-to-end cloud architecture powered by ML and AI, offering enterprises effortless networking solutions that seamlessly adapt to the evolving IT landscape. Their hybrid and agnostic approach, which combines both cloud and on-premises solutions, also ensures that customers enjoy unparalleled flexibility, visibility, and control.

Extreme Networks have become a key player in the cloud-driven networking sector by meeting the burgeoning demands of an IT ecosystem overwhelmed with data from ever-increasing sources. As it remains at the forefront of technological advancement integrating artificial intelligence into its offerings, Extreme is continuing on an impressive growth trajectory capped off by record revenue. Despite strong competition, the company’s unique end-to-end cloud architecture and hybrid solutions present it with a distinct edge, ensuring adaptability and efficiency in an ever-evolving tech landscape.

The energy storage sector is seeing a remarkable shift, as the need for renewable sources to be integrated seamlessly into power grids across the globe becomes a pressing concern for the future of sustainable energy.

Fluence is a global market leader in energy storage products and services and cloud-based software for renewables and storage. The company is transforming the way we power our world by helping customers create more resilient and sustainable electric grids.

With a presence in over 45 markets globally, Fluence provides an ecosystem to drive the clean energy transition, including modular, scalable energy storage products, along with comprehensive service offerings, and the Fluence IQ Platform, which delivers AI-enabled SaaS products for managing and optimizing renewables and storage from any provider.

Their expertise, technological advancements, and proactive approach to addressing the industry’s challenges have made them a sought-after partner for utility companies, independent power producers, and commercial and industrial customers.

Fluence is in an aggressive growth phase as continuous innovation and a commitment to developing state-of-the-art energy storage technology is supported by an expanding manufacturing footprint across the globe.

Fluence was founded in 2018 as a joint venture between Siemens and The AES Corporation. Initially focusing on grid-scale battery systems, Fluence set out to provide energy storage solutions that would enable the integration of renewable energy sources, such as wind and solar, into power grids. Their first products were aimed at large utilities and renewable energy developers, and they soon became known for their technological innovation in this area.

Propelled by a global shift towards clean energy, within a year, the company deployed projects in 18 countries across six continents. Their product offerings began to expand, encompassing a wide range of energy storage solutions tailored to different applications and markets, including the SunFlex Energy Storage platform specifically designed for solar integration. AI-powered products soon followed, with Fluence IQ, a smart software that optimizes energy storage and generation. While recognizing the potential of localized energy solutions, Fluence began to target commercial and industrial customers, adding products like behind-the-meter storage and demand management systems to their portfolio.

The acquisition of Advanced Microgrid Solutions (AMS) in 2020 enabled Fluence to further broaden its range and reach, integrating AMS’s software into its platform to enhance optimization and efficiency. While the sixth generation of the company’s tech stack, now offers more modular and scalable solutions for a wider array of applications, which is proving critical as they also expand their presence in emerging markets.

Julian Nebreda leads the Fluence team as president and chief executive officer in its efforts to accelerate energy storage adoption globally. As a long-term company veteran, previously holding several executive and senior roles with The AES Corporation since 2003, Nebreda brings over 20 years of experience in the energy industry and has been instrumental in leading and developing AES’s strategies and growth initiatives across different countries. Before joining AES, he also held varied positions in the public and private sectors.

Supporting Nebreda as Fluence’s chief strategy and commercial officer, Marek Wolek leads the company’s global strategy, partnerships, and M&A teams and also oversees commercial functions. He is also a long-term veteran of AES, where he played a vital part in the development of key storage projects throughout the world, as well as the transition of the storage business from AES to Fluence. Previously, Wolek has also had extensive strategy and investment experience within private equity and at PricewaterhouseCoopers. He has also founded several start-ups in the technology space.

Fluence has carved a niche for itself in the global energy sector by pioneering storage products and delivery services, recurring operational services, and digital solutions and applications for energy storage and other power assets. The company’s cutting-edge offerings have helped drive new use cases for grid-scale energy storage including frequency regulation, generation enhancement, capacity peak power, cost control, and renewable integration, among many other critical needs.

Fluence’s products which include integrated hardware, software, and digital intelligence are optimized for common customer use cases, but can be highly configured for specific applications. Its range covers solutions designed for grid-scale, industrial-strength applications, solar-optimized use cases, reducing demand charges, and the unique performance needs of entities that are increasingly relying on energy from lower-cost but variable renewables and low carbon sources, all while taking into account stringent requirements around availability, uptime, and IT security.

These products come with proprietary controls software, Fluence OS, which enables asset owners to operate the storage system with real-time information through multiple systems views, alarm notifications, and dashboards. Ultimately customers can control a multitude of factors that have a direct impact on costs, operational efficiency, safety, and even revenue-generating opportunities, among other things.

In addition to energy storage products, Fluence offerings include delivery services and recurring operational services which provide varying levels of training, maintenance, guarantees, warranties, and support to address a customer’s desired level of active system management. While an innovative Energy Storage-as-a-Service (ESaaS) enables customers to access the benefits of energy storage without upfront investment or technical expertise.

Digital applications and solutions developed internally, as well as through third parties are enabling advanced capabilities. The Fluence Mosaic Application, which was acquired from AMS, is an artificial intelligence-enabled bidding software for utility-scale storage and renewable and conventional generation assets, enabling customers to optimize asset trading in wholesale electricity markets. While the Nispera application which was acquired in 2022 from a Zurich-based provider of AI software targeting the renewable energy sector, helps customers monitor, analyze, forecast, and optimize the performance and value of renewable energy assets.

Major utility companies, tasked with providing power to millions, can use Fluence’s solutions to stabilize their grids, reduce costs, and manage the integration of more renewables. Independent power producers who generate power to sell it into the grid can use Fluence’s storage solutions to store excess energy and sell it when prices are higher. While conversely, commercial and industrial customers can deploy solutions to store cheaper off-peak energy for use during peak times.

In the real world, use cases include everything from ensuring a more reliable supply for a major city, that experiences frequent power outages due to increasing demands on the electrical grid, to regulating hydroelectric facilities, where wind speed changes and power output fluctuations can destabilize the grid. In areas transitioning from coal or gas power plants to renewable energy sources, Fluence can provide rapid response capabilities and maintain grid stability and reliability. While in a region with abundant sunlight, a solar farm can capture and store excess solar energy during the day to be dispatched later in the most efficient manner.

The urgency of climate change is demanding a global pivot away from fossil fuels toward sustainable energy systems. However, the intermittent nature of renewable energy remains a key challenge. Since sources like wind and solar are not consistent, the need for energy storage that can act as a buffer and make renewable energy available 24/7, has never been more pronounced. Furthermore, growing capacity constraints on existing power grids that were not designed to support distributed and renewable generation infrastructure or the accelerating electrification of industries, such as transportation, is driving demand for more generation, and positioning energy storage assets as a key solution.

Energy storage can help both serve and smooth additional peak demand, improving grid reliability and managing energy requirements. Beyond that, it is also a flexible tool, allowing grid planners, operators, and providers to navigate the evolving energy landscape. Consequently, grid modernization, decarbonization, and digitalization is redefining energy market infrastructure. It is estimated that this energy transformation will require $134 trillion of investment through to 2050 based on Bloomberg New Energy Finance’s clean electricity and green hydrogen pathway.

Government incentives and regulations are acting as catalysts, as various policies and legislation to support the transition from fossil fuels to low-carbon forms of energy have been announced and implemented around the globe. The U.S., in particular, has been proactive, passing the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which includes several incentives that support the adoption of energy storage products and services and are anticipated to benefit Fluence significantly.

A forecasted reduction in battery costs is expected to improve the economics of energy storage and support the development of larger energy storage systems. Moreover, in July, Fluence signed a battery cell supply agreement with AESC, under which the company will procure U.S.-manufactured battery cells. This positions Fluence to be one of the first to provide customers with a storage product that qualifies for a 10% Investment Tax Credit bonus for using domestic content under the IRA.

Fluence intends to further develop its energy products, services, and digital applications into solutions that solve ever-evolving use case challenges. In the last quarter, the company launched a predictive maintenance feature for battery energy storage on the Nispera application. It is also focused on expanding standardized offerings that are optimized for varying sales channels with a more localized, regional operating model to better support customers and improve logistics.

Mass manufacturing is a cornerstone of Fluence’s product delivery approach and a key to driving down product cost and delivering at scale. As a result, the company is also aiming to create an optimized production organization, develop mass manufacturing facilities globally, and continue to secure partnerships with key battery suppliers. It is anticipated that enhancing this product-focused model and supply chain leverage will support global growth objectives and result in superior unit economics.

To this end, in late 2022, Fluence partnered with a contract manufacturer to open a new manufacturing facility in the U.S. to better serve regional delivery and address ongoing supply chain constraints. The addition of this facility expanded the company’s production beyond Asia to meet increasing global demand, allowing it to better serve regional markets. While future plans intend to add more manufacturing sites in Europe.

Fluence has experienced a remarkable journey in revenue growth, with its most recent quarterly revenue hitting $536.4 million, marking an astounding 124% increase year-over-year. This surge has propelled the trailing 12 months’ revenue close to $2 billion, more than doubling from the previous year. The uptick in total revenue was largely driven by amplified sales of their battery-based energy storage products and solutions, albeit partially offset by a reduction in augmentation services. The robust growth is attributed mainly to the heightened demand for Gen6 solutions across all regions and the achievement of select project milestones ahead of time.

Fluence has also made strides by improving its GAAP gross profit margin to 4.1%, a significant leap from the negative 2.2% during the same quarter of the previous year. This shift was realized after executing legacy low-margin backlog and focusing on newer Gen6 solutions projects that promise higher margins. While the company recorded a net loss of about $35.0 million, this was an improvement from the $60.8 million loss during the same period last year.

Adding to its achievements, Fluence reported a healthy backlog, increasing its pipeline by over $1 billion to approximately $2.9 billion. The company not only executed its projects timely during the quarter, it also fortified its total cash position by more than $30 million to be just short of $300 million.

Looking ahead, management is forecasting to close out FY23 with total revenue of $2.0 billion to $2.1 billion, marginally exceeding consensus expectations at $1.96 billion, which represents still impressive year-over-year growth of 63%. Earnings per share are also forecasted to improve remarkably, going from a loss of $2.69 to a loss of just $0.57 in 2023, marking a 79% improvement.

The market for clean energy products and services is heavily reliant on innovation. The entry barriers are high due to the specialized expertise required and the hesitation among customers to adopt untested solutions. As a result, the arena remains a dynamic battleground for companies with the drive and vision to lead energy transformation.

Fluence’s major competitors include giants like Tesla, well-established energy players like Wartsila, and emerging innovators like Powin. The competitive landscape is not uniform; it fluctuates based on geographic regions, the specific grid services offered, and the distinct customer segments targeted.

Fortunately for Fluence its agility in discerning customer needs and swiftly converting that understanding into bespoke products, services, or use-cases resonate with the market.

Fluence is revolutionizing the power landscape by fostering more resilient and sustainable electric grids across markets worldwide. As the energy sector experiences positive market tailwinds, driven by heightened awareness of climate change and a global shift towards sustainable practices that are supported by government incentives and an improved operating model, the company looks set to continue its aggressive growth.