Introduction of Canva

Introduction of Canva: Canva is an effective and low-cost online design platform used to create social media graphics, presentations, posters, documents and other visual content [1,2,3] for users seeking to produce professional-looking infographic material. Canva co-founders Cameron Adams, Cliff Obrecht and Melanie Perkins are now worth an estimated $8 billion. Melanie Perkins a one of co-founder is the CEO of Canva that empowering the world to design, Canva has 2500 employees, 60 million active customers from 190 countries

Introduction of Canva:
Canva is an effective and low-cost online design platform used to create social media
graphics, presentations, posters, documents and other visual content [1,2,3] for users
seeking to produce professional-looking infographic material. Canva co-founders
Cameron Adams, Cliff Obrecht and Melanie Perkins are now worth an estimated $8
billion. Melanie Perkins a one of co-founder is the CEO of Canva that empowering the
world to design, Canva has 2500 employees, 60 million active customers from 190
countries. Canva is an Australian company worth about $19.7 billion. It smashes growth
records with monotonous regularity and its three 30-something co-founders are now
worth an estimated $10 billion. The purpose to build Canva is the back of producing
digital graphic design tools for everything from marketing presentations to greeting
cards, that are sufficiently simple to appeal to a broad base of users. Even in the world
of fast-growing software technology, Canva is a standout and, after fellow tech player
Atlassian, is the largest startup this country has produced. The company hit unicorn
status as recently as 2018. “Unicorn” is a term coined to define a startup reaching $1
billion [4, 11].
Canva partners are FedEx Office and Office Depot. The app includes templates for
users to use. The platform is free to use and offers paid subscriptions such as Canva
Pro and Canva for Enterprise for additional functionality [4]. In 2021, Canva launched a
video editing tool [5]. Users can also pay for physical products to be printed and shipped
[6]. Canva also utilized the strategy of starting niche and then going wide. Canva began
with Fusion Books (a more niche product) and then transformed it into Canva (a much
more widely applicable tool). By starting small, Perkins found that they were able to
gather a deeper understanding of their target audience — their problems, needs, and
desires. By June 2020 Canva raised $60 million in funding, achieved a valuation of $6
billion, and was used in 190 countries around the world. Currently, they boast active
users who have created over one billion designs [13]. It requires years of education and
effort to become a graphic-designer. To excel in this attractive but challenging sector,
you must learn the various tools required, from InDesign to Photoshop. But whatever of
those who lack the leisure or financial resources to pursue a career as a full-fledged
designer? Those who require the capacity to create high-quality layouts without
requirement for years of formal education. That is where Canva comes in.
Q.1. What challenges do you think the firm faced in going from idea to
implementation? What challenges are customer-focused? Supplier-focused?
The firm faced major challenges in going from idea to implementation due to living in
Australia makes it hard to reach the tech investors. The firm rejected by more than 100
investors. And Canva faced fierce competition with major market players. At initial stage
firm faced challenge in finding the third co-founder (CPO) and finding talent is the
continuous challenge because bigger the company will be, the harder it is to find talents.
But Canva did not face any difficulties in educating the users. As an online service
provider, the company does not have a direct-suppliers to enrich the firm with raw

materials, however, we can say that the offices’ equipment, PCs, and other important
materials can be considered as supplies.
Canva has used some of the capital raised to acquire bolt-on businesses to supplement
its organic growth but, according to the company, its “exponential surge in valuation and
increased demand from investors is attributed to the company’s enormous and
underserved addressable market, in tandem with the company’s unwavering
momentum as the workplace creativity tool of the future” [11]. This challenge will have
both customer-focused and Supplier-focused effect.
According to Perkins, the goal of Canva is “to enable the whole world to design.” By
providing graphic design software as a service, Canva functions are an online tool for
people who need designs but don’t have access to designers. Therefore, Canva also
needed to refine their brand mission and messaging before sharing Canva with the
world. This meant defining their brand goals and values [13].
Because residing in Australia made it more difficult to attract tech capitalists, the firm
faced significant obstacles in moving from concept to reality. Upwards of 100 investors
turned down the company. And Canva was up against some of the industry's biggest
names. Locating the third co-founder (CPO) was a struggle for the start-up, and
obtaining talent is a constant challenge since the bigger the company gets, the tougher
it is to locate talent. Canva, on the other hand, had no trouble training its users. The
business does not have supply chain to augment the company with raw resources
because it is online platform; however, the office spaces' hardware, Desktop computers,
and other valuable materials can be regarded as supplies. Also, Market Research
Information, Evaluation and Gap Impacts on the Prices, Competitors, Catalogue
creation and getting the ready-made samples, pictures, music are related to supplier
focused challenges.
The challenges didn’t stop there. Some of the other customer focussed challenges
included setting up the sales network, Pricing the product as per different markets,
Competing with the existing markets, Setting up collaborating technology, Giving the
users the almost ready made designs, Giving the users a platform which provides them
a platform to access all the required ingredients to accomplish the design work, Giving
the platform which gives the users to immediate connect with the social media, Giving
the users a platform which creates a design mappable to different formats and different
social media designs, Creating the platform which is useful for unlimited business and
personal purposes, Keeping up the pace with the fast evolving innovation in the market,
Giving access of Canva to users with ability to create the designs with minimal effort,
Creating a catalogue for every business user.
Q.2 Describe the resources the firm is building for sustainable competitive
advantage. Which of these do you think is exceptionally strong and will
keep the firm at the top of the industry?

Response:
Canva marketing strategy is impressive and focus on the continuous learning
process. Canva have sustainable competitive advantage because they learned
from their competitors and applied it to a different audience. Moreover, Canva
has a unique target audience: business owners, marketers, others professionals
and non-designers in genera which makes company as well as their strategy
better than other competitors. Moreover, Canva have a web application that has
made design easier for everyone, even the non-designers which makes Canva
sustainable and competitive as compare to other related businesses. Another
competitive advantage is that Canva templates and platform make it easy for any
first time or seasoned designer to create amazing designs. Also, Canva have a
sustainable growth advantage in recent period as within 2 years, they are able to
grow their user base to over 6 million and even expand to a premium service with
Canva for Work which is boosting the coverage in this modern era and give
advantage on the competitors in achieving the goal of becoming number one at
the top of industry [11].
Moreover, Canva have some other factors that help in boosting their success
such as first; Canva management understand their audience as they strategy is
all about to empowering the world to design by creating easy and visual content
by prioritizing the research and development focus. Canva, improve their users’
experience, simplifying the design process, lowering the learning curve, and
letting them be more efficient. Secondly, Canva shared their expertise through
content which enables their success towards top. Thirdly, Canva relay on
building relationships with influencers because when you have a great product or
platform, people are going to talk about it on social media and if you’re lucky they
might even write a blog post about your success. Fourth, Canva strategy is to
nurturing visitors into subscribers & users as great way to introduce visitors to
your company and what you can do for them is to blog about relevant topics that
would be interesting and helpful for them. [11].
Besides, Canva is budget friendly as You can use the limited free option, or
the Pro option at lower prices in comparison to other designer rates [7]. Canva
has a friendly organizational Culture which they want to be a place where
employees not only love coming to work, but where they also feel supported to
do their best work. To achieve this goal, Canva turned to Great Place to Work to
help them check in and objectively review their workplace culture [8]. Canva uses
the freemium strategy by providing 3 types of plans namely free, pro and
enterprise. Free as the name suggests costs nothing to the users, pro provides
some additional features for professionals at a price, and enterprise plans consist
of more advanced features for enterprises at a price [9]. In short, Canva makes
the complex simple and empowers non-designers to design. Plus, it provides
real, tangible value to users. As we can say “Apple democratized computers and
Google democratized information, and now Canva is democratizing design” [13].

Q.3. Discuss the impact of the pandemic on the firm? What did it do to
survive? What other choices were available to the firm? (Focus on the
technology aspects).
Response:
COVID-19 impacted as an opportunity to expand their firm by launching new
features and increase their customers. Canva, the online design platform
developed to help even the most inexperienced designer create projects ranging
from logos and social media marketing materials to pitch decks, [10] effective
communications, 4M Zoom backgrounds, Remote design. The firm creating tools
and templates to help businesses and individuals adapt to the new reality [10]
and their users increases about 55M to 65M. Canva firm also work for CSR
during the pandemic by launching Awareness Templates Medical supplies for
India and providing free access to “pro” version.
The company provides some public information on the growth in its customer
numbers - which now stands at 55 million active users per month and annualised
revenue of $650 million compared with $260 million last year. But that’s where
most of the solid detail ends. It is cash flow positive and has made a profit since
2017 - although the size of the earnings remains a guarded secret to all but the
private investors - many of which have backed the company since its inception
seven years ago. Also, he company did raise about $80 million equity capital -
and at that point was valued at $8 billion. And, according to co-founder Obrecht,
the issue of capital was 10 times oversubscribed. this capital raising was
undertaken because of the economic uncertainties surrounding COVID. History
has demonstrated that Canva - like many software companies - was a huge
beneficiary as workers moved to remote collaboration, leading to a boom in
active users and sales revenue [11].
Final Thoughts:
Well not every startup or mid-sized company can hope to replicate Canva’s
immense success or utilize the same growth methods, they can come away with
some great tips. It’s one thing to have a general feel for who you think your
product and services are best suited for. Knowing your target audience and
identify their problems is a deep, nuanced understanding of their needs,
problems, and desires. From gathering market research to collecting consumer
insights, brands that really know their target audiences will have a better chance
of connecting with them and gaining their support. Gathering support from
industry influencers in your industry can take you to the next level because
having supportive users is fantastic, but enough. Offering Real Value and
Empowering Users is important because this point may seem obvious, but it’s
one that too many brands never really nail.

There’s a difference between the brand value we think our audience wants and
the value they actually are looking for. That’s why it’s vital that we conduct
continual consumer research to gather insights. As our target audience will not
remain static, and neither will their needs and wants. To understand what value
they’re looking for and how to empower them, you need to do the legwork.
Bibliography :
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September 2019.
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tool brings much-needed simplicity to design process". PC World. Archived
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3. Swallow, Erica (18 November 2013). "Canva Makes Great Design
More Accessible". Forbes. Archived from the original on 16 August 2018.
4. Reuter, Dominick (10 January 2020). "5 apps entrepreneurs can use
right now". Business Insider. How much it costs: Pro, $120/year per user;
Enterprise, $360/year per user; free and discounted accounts available for
nonprofits and educators.
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2021.
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disadvantages-canva-liz-pienaar-bharo-
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creativity-and-company-vision-to-keep-remote-employees-engaged
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model/
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billion business | Fortune
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tripled-its-audience-in-less-than-a-single-year
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13. Cory Schröder, C., (June 11, 2021). How Canva Met the Needs of a
Neglected Audience — and Reaped the Rewards.
https://latana.com/post/canva-deep-dive/