Troika Ventures, the corporate venturing unit belonging to Russia-based investment bank Troika Dialog, has sold its stake in US-based online personal archiving company the Evernote Corporation to venture capital (VC) firm Sequoia Capital, it disclosed on Friday.
The exit was for a sum more than ten times what Troika has originally invested according to Artyom Yukhin, a partner at Troika Ventures, though the precise amount was not disclosed.
Yukhin said: "Evernote was one of the first companies that we invested in. In addition to financing, we provided expertise and assistance at an early stage to bring the company to the forefront of consumer internet and mobile services. Since Troika’s investment, the company’s user base increased in three years from 500,000 to over 20 million users.
Evernote provides a range of applications for desktop and mobile devices that enable users to find, archive and organise information, be it textual, visual or audio. Troika was among the investors in Evernote’s $6m series A round, along with Docomo Capital, the corporate venturing unit for Japan-based mobile telecom corporation NTT Docomo.
The two were joined by VC and private equity firm Morgenthaler Ventures for Evernote’s $10m series B round in 2009. Sequoia led a $20m series D round the following year, and a $50m round in July 2011 that saw participation from Morgenthaler, but neither of the corporate backers. Evernote has now raised about $95m in total.
The news comes less than a month after Evernote chief executive Phil Libin revealed that the company had acquired four startups – Skitch, Notable Meals, Readable and Minds Momentum – in the last few months of last year, each of which provided the technology base for recent Evernote releases.