Australia's youngest billionaire has almost doubled her personal wealth, proving not all industries are feeling the brunt of the coronavirus pandemic.
While Covid-19 has hit many businesses hard, it turns out that some have been absolutely flourishing - including the one belonging to Aussie Melanie Perkins.
The 32-year-old, who is originally from Perth, is the person behind Sydney-based digital business Canva, which she founded in 2014 with her partner Cliff Obrecht.
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In the five years following, the company expanded to Manila and Beijing, and it wasn't long before Perkins amassed a personal fortune of an estimated $1.3 billion ($900 million/£720m) by October 2019.
According to The Australian, Canva's popularity has increased during the pandemic thanks to the rise of people working from home, having made the switch to software like Perkins'.
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In fact, this spike was so substantial that it took Perkins' wealth to $2.5bn ($1.73bn/£1.38bn), making her the third richest woman in Australia behind Hancock Prospecting's Gina Rinehart (AUD $16.25bn) and Vicky Teoh of TPG Telcom (AUD $2.6bn)
After Canva announced on Monday that it had raised an estimated AUD $87million ($60m/£48m)in new funding led by Blackbird and Sequoia China, with participation from fellow previous investors Bond, Felicis and General Catalyst, Forbes reports the company is now worth AUD $8.77bn ($6bn/£4.82bn) - nearly double its previous valuation of AUD $4.6bn ($3.2bn/£2.5bn) set in October 2019.
Co-founder Cliff Obrecht told the business news outlet that the funding would allowed Canva to continue to expand its collaboration tools, launch an office in Austin, Texas, to serve as its US enterprise hub, and to consider potential acquisitions.
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The extra money is also intended to provide Canva with further cash reserves as uncertainty continues to rock the business world due to coronavirus.
Obrecht said Canva chose to raise from previous investors because of the company's trust in those relationships, and not because the startup unicorn might have faced a worse-off situation if it sought out new ones.
"With the amount of capital we brought on, we were well over ten times over-subscribed," Obrecht told Forbes.
"We could've raised $2 billion, but I think that would have been a really stupid thing to do."
Featured Image Credit: CanvaTopics: Billionaire, World News, News, Australia