Canva Acquires Flourish For Its Better Storytelling With Data!

CANVA ACQUIRES FLOURISH AS PART OF ITS MISSION TO TELL BETTER STORIES WITH DATA

Canva acquires a London-based data visualization startup Flourish in a bid to further deliver in its visual communications mission. This was made clear on Wednesday after the company declared it closed the acquisition of Flourish, although, financial terms regarding the deal were not disclosed.

The latest acquisition comes as the subject company amassed over 75 million monthly active users, up from more than 30 million in January 2021.

Based on this development, a total of Flourish’s 44 employees would be joining Canva according to the company’s co-founder and COO ‘Cliff Obrecht’. Clinchbase has learnt from a source familiar with this development.

Flourish, founded in 2016 by ‘Duncan Clark’ and ‘Robin Houston’, is understood as one which provides data visualization tools so that companies, like Sky, BBC, Deloitte, and Moody’s, can turn data points into simplified digestible charts, graphs, and visuals. Equally, it’s worth noting that the just acquired company will bring over 800,000 customers into the Canva fold, and had previously raised about $1 million in venture capital.

Prior to the latest (Canva acquiring Flourish), the Sydney-based which started in 2013 had previously raised more than $570 million in venture capital funding over the years, most recently a $200 million venture round in September 2021 that valued the subject company at $40 billion. Although, Obrecht pointed out that the new acquisition was not part of the venture round dollar, noting that talks with Flourish began prior to the raise.

In view of this, Obrecht equally made clear that customers will see products merge within the next month, with the aim of making way for new features around connecting any data source and turning it into rich and engaging visuals. This includes a number of customer-led requests like taking a spreadsheet and being able to create a dynamic chart by picking templates.

To be clear, this isn’t the only Canva’s move to add to its portfolio owing to the fact that the Flourish acquisition follows two other acquisitions made in 2011, including Kaleido and Smartmockups. While it remains positive with cash flow notably the most recent capital raise, Obrecht said, “it is good to have a ‘war chest’ to grow through people, product and M&A”.

“We acquire companies to add to the core Canva experience – data storytelling – which has become a critical part of business communication to convene data in digestible ways”, Obrecht added. “Canva saw this as paramount and accelerated the deal with Flourish, which democratizes data storytelling, and combined with our visual storytelling, has real synergy”.

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