Having a well-known founder can go a long way towards helping a startup attract investors. The latest example of that is C3 IoT Inc., the platform-as-a-service provider led by Silicon Valley billionaire Thomas Siebel, which today raised $70 million in a funding round led by TPG Growth.

The cash infusion follows a series of major customer wins for the outfit that included a $25 million contract from the State Department and a deal with French utility ENGIE SA, one of the largest companies in Europe. Both organizations were drawn to C3 IoT’s cloud-based development toolkit by its focus on machine-generated data. The main component is a platform-as-a-service stack specifically geared towards powering workloads that process information from connected devices, particularly industrial equipment.

The suite features a set of ready-made modules that C3 IoT says can be turned into a functioning application with a fraction of the effort needed to create an analytics service from scratch. As a result, the cost of development is reduced while release cycles are shortened. And as if that wasn’t enough, Siebel’s startup also offers nine pre-assembled analytics services alongside its application stack that enables organizations to start digging into their machine-generated data even faster.

The lineup consists of general-purpose tools designed to automate common tasks like device maintenance and niche applications that cater to specific industries. One of the services in the latter group promises to help power companies better process data from the sensors in their electricity grids, while another is built to track vehicle fleets. And C3 IoT even offers applications for organizations that don’t necessary operate a lot of connected devices, but still want to take advantage of its platform’s analytics capabilities.

The startup’s pre-assembled services represent one of its main advantages over Ayla Networks Inc., another platform-as-a-service vendor focused on the connected universe that recently raised $39 million in a funding round of its own. Today’s cash infusion from TPG will help C3 IoT cement its position in the market and step up customer acquisition efforts.

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