ChistaDATA Secures USD 3 Million Pre-Series A Funding to Advance Open-Source ClickHouse Infrastructure

ChistaDATA, an emerging infrastructure operations provider focused on delivering enterprise-grade managed ClickHouse solutions, has successfully closed a USD 3 million pre-Series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital India. The company plans to deploy these funds toward multiple strategic initiatives that will strengthen its position in the competitive data analytics market.

Strategic Investment Priorities

The newly secured capital will fuel ChistaDATA’s development roadmap across three main pillars. First, the company will accelerate the creation of a fully open-source ClickHouse server, coupled with comprehensive orchestration tools designed to streamline automation and DevOps workflows for enterprise-class ColumnStore systems. Second, ChistaDATA Cloud—the company’s autonomous, self-healing cloud-native ClickHouse platform—will receive significant development resources. This offering is architected to allow customers to provision and pay exclusively based on data volume, eliminating the need to manage underlying server infrastructure or DevOps operations. Third, the company will expand its team through targeted hiring across research, engineering, marketing, and brand development functions.

The Market Opportunity Behind the Funding

The data analytics and business intelligence sector is experiencing explosive growth as enterprises increasingly rely on data-driven decision-making frameworks. The global data analytics market is projected to generate USD 300 billion in value within the consumer-facing internet economy by 2025. However, current solutions present significant challenges. Traditional cloud data warehouses typically operate as closed-source platforms with elevated total cost of ownership (TCO), while usage-based pricing models drive escalating analytics expenses. More critically, these solutions often lock customers into specific vendors, limiting platform configurability and strategic flexibility.

ChistaDATA enters this landscape with a differentiated approach: the company is committed to building free, open-source enterprise-class ClickHouse implementations suitable for both on-premises and cloud deployments.

Technical Innovation and Performance

ChistaDATA has forked and substantially rewritten the original ClickHouse codebase developed by Yandex, creating its own distribution called “ChistaDATA server for ClickHouse.” This custom implementation delivers approximately 4X performance improvements compared to standard ClickHouse through high-performance LSM store implementations, while maintaining complete compatibility with the classic ClickHouse ecosystem.

Critically, the ChistaDATA ClickHouse distribution is owned and maintained by the ChistaDATA Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing enterprise-class open-source ClickHouse and related orchestration tools. This governance structure ensures customers retain perpetual access to the open-source server without risk of vendor lock-in, while the company retains customers through superior service delivery and demonstrable ROI.

Founder Background and Vision

ChistaDATA was founded in 2021 by Shiv Iyer, a serial entrepreneur and recognized database systems expert with over two decades of experience in open-source database infrastructure. Iyer has managed approximately 100 petabytes of consolidated database infrastructure across roles at internet-scale companies including Twitter, Pinterest, Garmin, and PayPal. His expertise spans performance engineering, scalability optimization, and database reliability engineering.

“Building a fully open-source deep-tech ColumnStore business around ClickHouse for both on-premises and cloud platforms requires long-term commitment to community contributors and ecosystem stakeholders,” Iyer stated. “When I decided to establish ChistaDATA, my first conversation was with Anandamoy from Sequoia Capital India. He quickly assisted with company structuring, and the firm has demonstrated hands-on engagement with both strategic and tactical support.”

Investor Perspective

Anandamoy Roychowdhary, Principal at Sequoia Capital India, commented on the investment thesis: “When Shiv articulated his vision for building a managed ClickHouse service, we recognized the convergence of a powerful technology trend with an exceptional founder. We’re enthusiastic about collaborating with Shiv to build what we believe will emerge as a compelling, fully open-source company from this region.”

Enterprise Adoption and Service Capabilities

ChistaDATA’s customer base spans globally recognized enterprises including Orange Telecommunications, Applied Materials, DHL, Netflix, National Geographic, and BBC. The company offers comprehensive managed services focused on building scalable, highly reliable database infrastructure optimized for web-scale analytics. ChistaDATA’s service model guarantees strong uptime SLAs (service level agreements) backed by dedicated performance and troubleshooting teams.

Looking ahead to 2022, ChistaDATA aims to establish itself as the provider delivering the most reliable managed ClickHouse platform in the cloud with the highest uptime guarantees. The company’s commitment includes automatic diagnostic data collection, adaptive monitoring, automated problem detection, and intelligent troubleshooting recommendations.

About ChistaDATA

ChistaDATA operates as a full-stack ClickHouse infrastructure operations consulting, support, and managed services provider with deep expertise in performance optimization, scalability engineering, and data SRE (Site Reliability Engineering). Headquartered in California, the company maintains distributed teams across Canada, the UK, Germany, Russia, Ukraine, Australia, Singapore, and India to deliver 24/7 enterprise-grade consultative support and managed services.

Additional enterprise customers include PayPal, Garmin, Honda’s IoT initiatives, Viacom, Nike, Morgan Stanley, American Express Travel, VISA, PRADA, Blue Dart, Carlsberg, Sony, and Unilever, among others.

About Sequoia Capital India

Sequoia Capital supports ambitious founders in building enduring companies from inception through IPO and beyond. Operating across Southeast Asia and India, Sequoia India actively partners with founders across diverse sectors, including portfolio companies such as BYJUs, Carousell, Druva, Gojek, OYO Rooms, Tokopedia, Truecaller, Zilingo, and Zomato. The firm draws from 48 years of institutional knowledge and experience scaling companies including Airbnb, Alibaba, Apple, Dropbox, Google, LinkedIn, and Stripe. Sequoia’s LP base has been anchored by nonprofits from the beginning, ensuring that founder accomplishments generate meaningful societal impact, with the majority of profits directed toward organizations including the Ford Foundation, Mayo Clinic, and MIT.