Apica Raises $2 Million for U.S. Expansion

Apica has raised $2 million from investors that will be used for the Swedish company’s expansion into the United States.

Industrifonden led the investment round, with KTH Chalmers Capital also taking part. KTH previously invested in the company. ALMI Invest, a new investor, also took part in the investment round.

The investors are based in Sweden.

“We’ll use the investment to build out sales and marketing in the U.S. to compete against the likes of Soasta on load testing and Keynote Systems (News - Alert) on performance monitoring, for example. We compete with these companies, however, Apica offers the best fully integrated testing and monitoring solution for cloud and mobile applications,” Sven Hammar, CEO, Apica, said in a company statement.

Prior to this round, Apica raised $1.3 million in August 2010, and has raised about $4.4 million from investors in total, according to a report from TechCrunch.

 “We’re delighted to invest in Apica’s business. Given the company’s strong entrepreneurial team and robust market segment, we believe that Apica’s prospects for success are excellent,” Johan Englund, investment manager, Industrifonden, said in the statement.

Soasta raised $20.7 million for cloud-based testing solutions, TechCrunch said.

Apica was successful in Europe, TechCrunch adds.

"Since our first investment in spring 2007, Apica has undergone fantastic growth — from a small local player to the point where it is now seriously positioning itself in the U.S. With this investment, the company will have the opportunity to take another big step forward in executing on its expansion plans," Jonas Rahmn, partner at KTH Chalmers Capital, said in a press statement.

In related news, Apica has introduced Apica Watch, a cloud service with support for Selenium.

Apica Watch lets subscribers monitor their websites as end-users, according to TMCnet.

Apica has also introduced an Apica iPhone application. And company has partnered with cloud players: RightScale and Rackspace (News - Alert).

Apica is load testing and performance-monitoring provider for cloud and mobile applications.

It has over 250 customers, such as: Newsday, PricewaterhouseCoopers, eBay (News - Alert) Sweden and Thomas Cook.

Apica products are designed for the cloud and have performed large published load tests.

Founded in 2005, Apica is based in Stockholm, Sweden, and Palo Alto (News - Alert), Calif., with other offices in the United Kingdom.