Melanie Perkins, a 32-year-old Filipino-Australian, is now Australia’s youngest ever billionaire with a net worth of US$2.5 billion. This makes her Australia’s third-richest woman thanks to Canva, a graphic design company she co-founded less than a decade ago.
According to the Australian Financial Review, this also makes Perkins the richest entirely self-made billionaire in Australia.
Perkins and her co-founders, fiancé Cliff Obrecht and Cameron Adams, recently secured US$60 million in new funding from Australian venture capital fund Blackbird and Chinese firm Sequioa China. The new funding now puts Canva’s market value at US$6 billion (AUS $8.6 billions), almost double of what it was in October, 2019.
A tech startup, Canva is a popular free graphic design platform that’s garnered a loyal following due to its “freemium” model that lets users access a substantial library of free design templates. It’s premium features on Canva Pro give its 1.5 million subscribers an even larger library of graphic design templates on its platform.
*This story originally appeared on Esquiremag.ph. Minor edits have been made by the Preview.ph editors.
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