API management company Apigee completed a US$20 million funding fround, which it said will allow it to scale up development, marketing and sales for its API platform and expand into new markets.

The funding is led by new investor Focus Ventures, with participation from Bay Partners, Norwest Venture Partners, SAP Ventures and Third Point Ventures.

"Every business – from technology start-ups to bricks-and-mortar giants – needs an API to compete in a digital economy that is increasingly dominated by apps as the primary vehicle for communicating, connecting and e-commerce," said Chet Kapoor, Apigee's CEO.

Apigee recently acquired the technology assets of the Wholesale Applications Community (WAC), saying it will “develop and evolve” the WAC Web Run Time and network APIs and provide them as a managed service to operator group GSMA and its members.

"As demand for APIs and apps climb, we are using the additional funding to accelerate our time-to-market and expand into new vertical markets with industry-specific API solutions. Our recent acquisition of WAC and resultant new Apigee services for unified mobile API/app development is our first major step in this direction," said Kapoor.

The WAC payment API, an operator billing service launched earlier this year that enables customers to pay for digital goods via their phone bill or prepaid credit, already runs on the Apigee API platform.

Almost 20 percent of the top 100 companies in the Fortune 500 use Apigee’s technology with more than 100 billion API calls per month being made through the platform.