Gone are the days when we used to carry important files on USB/hard drives. Digital transformation has changed the way we used to access/transfer documents. Online file hosting, cloud hosting, or online storage provider is an internet-based service designed to store user data online. Every user is given a unique username and password to access the uploaded files from any location. Plenty of companies are providing such services. Dropbox is one of them.
About Dropbox
Dropbox is a file hosting service provided by Dropbox Inc. The firm has its headquarter in San Francisco, California. Online storage, personal cloud space, and client software are the major operations of Dropbox. Drew Houston founded the firm in June 2007. He is also the Chief Executive Officer(CEO) of Dropbox. Earlier, the company was known as Evenflow. Later, the name changed to Dropbox in 2009.
The company started its initial journey with the domain name www.getdropbox.com. later, the startup acquired the domain name dropbox.com to continue its further journey.
Houston was a student of MIT. Most of the time, he used to forget his USB Drive that has crucial documents for his presentation and project. He tried to solve this issue. Initially, it was a personal project for Houston. Later, he found that the people are also suffering from file hosting issues so he made it a formal company.
Dropbox not only provides online file hosting services but team members can also collaborate to edit/update those files. Collaboration functionality is quite productive for the companies that have offices in different locations.
Dropbox is not limited to document sharing related to official work. You can also share entertaining photos, and videos with your friends and family members. Dropbox has its presence globally. It is the most trusted firm among all its competitors.
Growth of Dropbox
Currently, Dropbox is one of the most valuable startup globally. It has a market cap of over $10 billion. The company was also heavily criticised for security and privacy issues.
Last year, Dropbox introduced a new product with the name Dropbox Spaces. Under this product, tech firms can work on the cloud in collaboration with all team members. Spaces will provide the technical infrastructure for project execution. Dropbox Spaces has become very popular within few months. The startup considers it as a standalone product.
Dropbox attracts its audience with a free account with limited storage size. If a user wants more storage space with additional features, he/she should upgrade to the paid version. If you will signup to Dropbox, you will get 2 gigabytes of free space. On a referral basis, your account will get a maximum of 16 gigabytes of free space. You can’t have more than 16 gigabytes on a free Dropbox account.
Based on the referral and freemium business model, Dropbox is showing good growth every year. In 2020, it had total revenue of $1.856 billion that is 16 63% more than its revenue of $1.661 billion in 2019.
Dropbox has raised a total of $1.7 billion from ten financial rounds from 38+ investors. The firm has also acquired 25+ small tech startups to strengthen its operations. HelloSign is the latest acquisition completed by Dropbox in 2019.
The startup has also invested in more than 5 companies. Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Zoho Docs, and ShareFile are the major competitors of Dropbox.
