Nile Raises $175 Million in Series C Funding to Compete with Cisco NaaS

Nile, a provider of next-generation enterprise networks co-founded by two former Cisco executives, has obtained $175 million in a new Series C funding round. Its network-as-a service (NaaS) product competes with Cisco.

March Capital and Sanabil Investments co-led the funding round, with strategic participation from solutions by stc, Prosperity7 and Liberty Global Ventures, and contributions from 8VC, Geodesic Capital, FirstU Capital and Valor Equity Partners. This brings Nile’s total funding to $300 million.

Nile is creating a NaaS offering it says is different from existing traditional network solutions such as Cisco and others. Nile customers don’t pay for any capital equipment, software licenses, maintenance contracts, software upgrades or security patches, and only pay for usage-per-month.

John Chambers and Pankaj Patel co-founded Nile. It emerged from stealth less than a year ago.

Series C Funding to Expand Nile’s Global Reach

Nile’s Vivek Khemani

Vivek Khemani, Nile‘s vice president of channels, said the company plans to use the funding to expand its global reach to large SIs and service providers, “which requires significant back-office support and operational capabilities to help establish and maintain these relationships.”

“This is part of our primary focus for the funding, which is to expand the company and scale our sales teams, which includes our partner relations team,” he said. “We are a partner-first company, which is why we’ve invested so heavily in building out an aggressive partner program that increases partner profitability, while also creating new business and growth opportunities for those partners. Today we have over 100 partner engagements under way globally. We will continue to build out our channel and extend with new investments going into the SI and service provider community.”

Nile has rapidly expanded beyond North America into EMEA, and has seen increasing demand for its access network service from organizations including Stanford University, Pitney Bowes and Carta, among others.

Series C Funding Further Proof of Nile’s ‘Unique Position’

“The funding is further proof of Nile’s unique position in a decades-old industry fraught with complexity,” Khemani said. “Nile is challenging the status quo by offering a significantly more simplified approach that was built from the ground up to reduce the risk of cyberattacks and increase resiliency. Alongside our partners, we’ll be able to offer our solutions to a wider global audience with our latest funding round.”

In the months ahead, partners can expect increased support both from a back-office/operational support basis, and from an enablement and pipeline-creation basis, he said.

“Our DNA is partner-first, thus we have and will continue to make heavy investments in our partners to help them grow, and grow with the highest possible profit,” Khemani said.

“In just four years, Nile has engineered an entirely new connectivity experience through a groundbreaking approach that prioritizes security and empowers IT to transform operations,” said Sumant Mandal, March Capital’s co-founder and managing partner. “Led by a team of seasoned industry veterans with extensive C-suite expertise and bolstered by a dedicated group of skilled engineers and architects, Nile is rapidly evolving into a market leader ushering in a new era in networking that promises unparalleled possibilities.”