Dropbox Acquires FormSwift for $95 Million

Trisha Kae Andrada, Tech Times 16 December 2022, 01:12 pm

Dropbox has just confirmed its acquisition of FormSwift, a cloud-based platform that allows organizations to create, edit, approve, share, and print business forms and documents.

With the deal having finalized on Thursday, Dec. 15, Dropbox has announced that it would pay $95 million in cash to purchase the San Francisco-based business.

The Alliance

As first reported by TechCrunch, the buyout of FormSwift is a step toward Dropbox's ultimate goal of developing an end-to-end "agreement workflow capability," as stated in a press release via Business Wire.

FormSwift will support Dropbox's current document storage, signing, and sharing features, such as Dropbox Sign, Dropbox Forms, and DocSend.

Dropbox VP and GM of document workflows Chetan Dandekar stated that they are designing solutions to assist Dropbox clients in flourishing in today's virtual-first world by updating manual processes and digitizing workloads.

He added that with a library of regularly used forms and agreement templates and a client base comparable to Dropbox, FormSwift is a solid complement to their product line.

"We firmly believe that FormSwift is a strong addition to our document workflows product suite, and will help us bring even more value to our customers."

FormSwift's Business Core

David Becker and Sathvik Tantry launched FormSwift in 2012, intending to decrease companies' time spent filling out standard forms.

The platform provides businesses with a database of pre-designed templates for a variety of legal documents, including onboarding waivers, leasing agreements, and non-disclosure agreements (NDAs), which can be edited and completed with the click of a button.

Reportedly, FormSwift did not accept any external finance prior to this acquisition. Yet, the company boldly claims that it has assisted small business owners and contractors create more than 10 million documents.

According to CEO and co-founder Tantry, the firm's services removed the need for paper copies, faxes, and snail mail.

He claimed that FormSwift had become a leading supplier of tools to enable people effortlessly create, modify, sign, and collaborate on documents and processes in the cloud.

"By joining forces with Dropbox, we can better scale our capabilities to make work easier for a larger number of small businesses and freelance customers," Tantry remarked.

Dropbox's Acquisition Strategy

The acquisition of FormSwift by Dropbox follows the company's previous takeover of the assets of Boxcryptor, a startup that safeguards businesses' data across a wide range of cloud services.

Both are a part of Dropbox's ongoing strategy of minor acquisitions designed to improve rather than compete with the company's main offerings in the fiercely competitive cloud storage market.

Based on Crunchbase's report, Dropbox has made a total of 28 acquisitions in this space. This includes the 2019 purchase of HelloSign, being the most expensive at an estimated $230 million.

New services like Dropbox Shop, which provides users with the means to sell digital material directly to consumers, were made possible by the company's acquisition strategy. It successfully debuted in April this year.