Cloudinary Bolsters Executive Team, Scales Rapidly to Support Accelerated Company Growth and Global Expansion

Cloudinary, the media experience platform for many of the world’s top brands, today announced three new executive appointments to support its continued growth, rapid customer adoption and product line expansion. These strategic hires include Saranya Babu as chief marketing officer, Mike Carlson as senior vice president, global customer success, and Jason Johns as vice president of sales for EMEA & APAC. All three bring extensive SaaS and cloud market experience to help usher Cloudinary into its next phase of growth.

The three industry veterans join Cloudinary at a pivotal moment for the company and the industry with the pandemic-driven market shift towards digital, online engagements driving unprecedented demand for creating rich visual experiences. Named to the Forbes Cloud 100 for the fourth consecutive year—the publication's ranking of the best, most valuable private cloud companies in the world—Cloudinary has reached several key growth milestones in 2021, including reaching the one million user mark. The company also successfully launched the first in a series of new products, Media Optimizer -- a low-code solution to help brands more easily deliver the best, fastest visual content every time. Just six months since launch, Media Optimizer has been adopted by dozens of customers, including Active Sports, Hunter Fan, and Out&Out, and was recognized with a 2021 MarTech Breakthrough Award.

“At the heart of Cloudinary is a company fueled by innovation and a passion for delivering fast and engaging visual experiences all over the world,” said Cloudinary Co-founder and CEO, Itai Lahan. “The past year has seen a number of milestone moments for Cloudinary and as we plan for the future, we’ll remain focused on helping our customers unleash the full potential of their visual media. It’s an honor to announce our expanded team with these three new appointments, each bringing a wealth of experience that will be critical to our success during this next phase of growth. I’m excited for the months ahead.”

About the executives

New CMO Saranya Babu previously led the marketing team at Wrike, acquired by Citrix earlier this year, where she implemented, built and scaled sophisticated cross-functional marketing strategies. As a recipient of the 2021 Silicon Valley Women of Influence award and shortlisted in the 2020 B&T Women in Media award her experience working for both bootstrapped companies and VC-backed hyper growth companies will complement Cloudinary’s expected growth trajectory for the next year and beyond. As CMO, Babu will oversee Cloudinary’s marketing, communication and brand operations.

Mike Carlson joins Cloudinary in the new role of Senior Vice President for Global Customer Success. Prior to Cloudinary he was President of the US and Global Chief Customer at Siteimprove. While there, he helped the website optimization company grow 5x in annual recurring revenue. Cloudinary’s customers are its most valuable asset and Carlson will be responsible for delivering delightful experiences for its fast-growing customer base. Carlson will report into the company’s newly established Operations Office, headed up by COO Amit Sharon.

As Cloudinary continues its expansion globally, seasoned sales executive Jason Johns will take the reins as Vice President of Sales for EMEA & APAC. Based out of Cloudinary’s London office, Johns will lead Cloudinary’s Enterprise and Mid Market New Business Sales Team as it scales its business in these regions. Johns has worked in enterprise sales for more than 20 years, building and developing high-growth SaaS based businesses – most recently in the media and broadcast space at companies like Comcast, Ooyala, and Applicaster.

Doubling down on innovation

In addition to reaching more than a million developers and being named a Best Place to Work in the Bay Area, Cloudinary achieved several key milestones this year. These include:

• Launching Cloudinary Labs, a space for developers working with visual content to explore and experiment with innovative concepts, from new image formats and AI-centric video technologies to new approaches to coding
• Partnering with Visionular to collectively push for AV1 and its associated image format, AVIF, to become the next video and image standard for the Internet
• Implementing support for the next-generation JPEG XL image format into Cloudinary in parallel with its early support by both Chrome and Firefox
• Joining the MACH Alliance and launching its SAP Commerce Cloud Integration
• Receiving key awards and accolades across its product suite, including several wins for its Digital Assessment Management (DAM) solution, such as two Constellation ShortLists, DAM for Digital Experiences and DAM for High Volume Commerce, as well as a 2021 SaaS Award for Best SaaS Product for e-Commerce

To learn more, visit cloudinary.com and join us at ImageCon, our annual user conference to be held virtually October 19 and 20. The thought-provoking event will discuss what’s next in the world of visual media and host a variety of industry thought leaders, partners and customers, including speakers from Apartment Therapy Media, Bombas, lastminute.com, Mediavine, Minted, National Geographic and more.

About Cloudinary

Cloudinary’s mission is to empower companies to deliver visual experiences that inspire and connect by unleashing the full potential of their media. With more than 50 billion assets under management and 8,000 customers worldwide, Cloudinary is the industry standard for developers, creators and marketers looking to upload, store, transform, manage, and deliver images and videos online. As a result, leading brands like Atlassian, Bleacher Report, Bombas, Grubhub, Hinge, NBC, Mediavine, Peloton, Petco and Under Armour are seeing significant business value in using Cloudinary, including faster time to market, higher user satisfaction and increased engagement and conversions. For more information, visit www.cloudinary.com.

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