It was 2020, and Nicolas Orban, Stéphane Derosiaux and Stéphane Maarek were beyond frustrated with Apache Kafka. The tool for handling real-time data streams simply couldn't keep up with the trio's engineering needs -- particularly during the pandemic, when companies were rushing to embrace cloud services.

"Many companies were finding it difficult to scale their data operations," Orban told TechCrunch. "And they were struggling to tap the full potential of their data, leaving vast amounts unused or siloed."

After noodling around for a bit, Orban, Derosiaux and Maarek concluded that Kafka, cumbersome as it was, wasn't a total loss. It might work, they thought, if you could spruce it up with some tooling.

So they decided to build the tooling.

The trio called that tool Conduktor, and over the years, it has evolved into a fully-fledged platform for streaming data management -- one that can intercept and filter data according to a company's policies before it reaches its final destination.

Conduktor essentially acts as a gatekeeper for data, Orban (the startup's CEO) said, preventing "bad data" -- corrupt, skewed or otherwise incomplete data -- from polluting downstream applications. This could be data for real-time analytics, for example, or predictive maintenance.

"Customers have struggled with the data explosion, under-utilization and technical hurdles that come with scaling real-time data," Orban said. "We now work with some of the largest companies in the world, as they are the most impacted by these challenges."

Companies can monitor their data streams using Conduktor, or they can share them with third parties via Conduktor Share, which lets organizations serve specific streams externally for data licensing.

The tool runs on a company's infrastructure, and can enforce data masking and access controls to ensure that a company's data handling practices align with regulations like GDPR.

This month, Conduktor closed a $30 million Series B funding round led by RTP Global, with participation from Ansa, M12 (Microsoft's venture fund) and Accel.

Conduktor has competition in the space (like Immerok), but the startup has grown at a rapid clip, tripling its annual recurring revenue in the past year. The startup counts DraftKings and Lufthansa as customers, and expects to double its 60-person team by 2026.

"As streaming is inevitable for digital innovation, the demand for an enterprise data management platform continues to rise," Orban said, citing a Fortune Business Insights report that estimates the market for stream processing to grow to $185 billion by 2032.

The fresh cash, which brings the New York-based company's total capital raised to $52 million, will be put toward general expansion and product development, Orban said.