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NuWave Solutions Acquires BigBear, a Leading Provider of Big Data Analytics Solutions to the National Security Community

Ae Industrial Partners

NuWave Solutions Acquires BigBear, a Leading Provider of
Big Data Analytics Solutions to the National Security Community

WASHINGTON DC, December 3, 2020 – NuWave Solutions (“NuWave”), a leading provider of data management, advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, cloud solutions and technologies to the federal government, announced today that it has acquired BigBear Inc. (“BigBear” or “the Company”), a leading provider of cloud-based big data analytics solutions to the national security community within the U.S. Government. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

This is the first acquisition completed by NuWave since being acquired by AE Industrial Partners, LP (“AEI”) in June 2020. AEI is a private equity firm specializing in Aerospace, Defense & Government Services, Power Generation, and Specialty Industrial markets.

Founded in 2008, BigBear specializes in big data computing and analytics, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, geospatial information systems, data mining and systems engineering to customers in the U.S. defense and intelligence communities. The Company combines comprehensive technology solutions with its BigBear Platform to create entirely private, secure, and unique cloud environments that helps organizations enable big data computing, machine learning and improved decision-making while better managing risk. BigBear specializes in helping customers make sense of their data by delivering the most advanced customized data analytics solutions available today. BigBear is headquartered in San Diego, California, with additional offices in Reston, Virginia and Charlottesville, Virginia.

“BigBear’s data and analytics solutions bolster our existing capabilities to address the entire spectrum of information superiority,” said Dr. Reggie Brothers, CEO of NuWave. “Making better decisions from data while mitigating risk is a top priority for our government customers, and we look forward to working with the BigBear team as we supplement our capabilities to meet growing demand.”

“NuWave is building a unique business and we are excited to be a part of a larger company that shares the same culture of innovation and mission focus,” said BigBear CEO Frank Porcelli, who will remain with the Company. “We are enthusiastic for the opportunities we can pursue together moving forward.”

Brian Levy, President and CTO of BigBear, who will also remain with the Company added, “This partnership enables us to diversify our capabilities across a broad collection of mission partners and commercial markets, allowing us to offer our customers differentiated, end-to-end solutions.”

“When AEI invested in NuWave earlier this year, we stated our commitment to build a world-class advanced analytics and artificial intelligence platform, and the addition of BigBear is a great first step in that journey,” said Jeffrey Hart, Principal at AEI. “We remain focused on adding more companies with specialized technology that complement NuWave’s existing capabilities and expand its roster of premier government customers.”

“Predictive technologies and data analytics are critical in helping government organizations reduce risk and identify opportunities,” said Kirk Konert, Partner at AEI. “We believe NuWave is well positioned to take advantage of these growing demands.”

Akerman LLP served as legal advisor and Ernst & Young LLP served as financial advisor to NuWave. King & Spalding LLP and Foundry General Counsel, PLLC served as legal advisors and Baird served as financial advisor to BigBear.

About NuWave
Based in the Washington, D.C. metro area, NuWave is a leading provider of data management, advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cloud solutions that delivers anticipatory intelligence and advanced decision support solutions and technologies to the U.S. Government. NuWave provides innovative, customized solutions through development, selection, and integration of leading technologies. NuWave has unmatched expertise in advanced technologies across the analytics and data management lifecycle and applies its expertise and teamwork to give customers the ability to solve complex problems, communicate, and manage information. For more information, please visit https://www.nuwavesolutions.com.

About BigBear
BigBear, Inc. is a leading provider of cloud-based, big data and analytics solutions for government customers, helping them make sense of big data. The Company specializes in big data computing and analytics, cloud computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning, geospatial information systems, data mining and systems engineering. To learn more about BigBear, visit: http://bigbear.io.

About AE Industrial Partners
AE Industrial Partners is a private equity firm specializing in Aerospace, Defense & Government Services, Power Generation, and Specialty Industrial markets. AE Industrial Partners invests in market-leading companies that can benefit from its deep industry knowledge, operating experience, and relationships throughout its target markets. AE Industrial Partners is a signatory to the United Nations Principles for Responsible Investing. Learn more at www.aeroequity.com.

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Sovereign backs the management team of digital transformation provider Zenitech

Sovereign Capital Partners, the UK private equity Buy & Build specialist, is delighted to announce that it has completed a significant investment in Zenitech, a successful strategic business consulting and technology services provider. Sovereign has partnered with Zenitech’s management team to significantly scale the business to meet the increasing demand for its services in this rapidly growing UK and international market.

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Zenitech provides consulting, technology and product innovation services with a focus on building and scaling mission-critical products and systems for blue-chip clients. The company empowers its clients to future proof their businesses by providing end-to-end digital transformation capabilities to create new digital products, increase revenue and market share, streamline operations and reduce costs.

Established in 2015, the business has c.200 employees across three offices in the UK, Romania and Lithuania. The successful combination of Zenitech’s high-quality strategic consultancy and technical software development capabilities is reflected in its rapidly growing and deeply embedded multi-year client relationships.

Sovereign is backing the founders of the business Christopher Lacy-Hulbert, formerly Director of Engineering at Yahoo, Edward Batrouni, previously Senior Head of Technology Outsourcing at Betfair and Associate Director at CapGemini, and Csaba Suket, formerly Director of Technology at Betfair. The team have a deep level of industry experience and a proven track record of delivering their strategic plans.

Jonathan Thorne, Director, Sovereign Capital Partners said: ‘We are delighted to be backing this highly capable and entrepreneurial management team who we have got to know over the last three years. Zenitech operates in a high growth and fragmented market, with digital transformation becoming of ever-increasing strategic importance to businesses. Given the outstanding quality of Zenitech’s proposition we believe its success to date is set to continue into the future, and we look forward to supporting Christo, Ed and Csaba to deliver the company’s next stage of growth.’

Edward Batrouni, co-founder of Zenitech commented: ‘We have come a long way since we set up our business just five years ago. This is an exciting market and we have achieved fast yet solid growth without compromise to the quality of our offering. We have the privilege of working with fantastic clients that value the services we provide. This was the right time for us to seek an investor and in Sovereign we believe we have found a partner that will help us to further scale and develop our services to help clients meet their own business goals and ambitions.’

Christopher Lacy-Hulbert, Zenitech co-founder said of the transaction: ‘This is a huge milestone for us and really helps to set the foundation for an ambitious programme of growth and expansion. We are committed to maintaining an extremely high bar in both calibre and quality of expertise within our business. Investing in the right parts of our company will allow us to do that as we bring our offering to even larger, mission critical customers.’

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Leading Construction Tech Company Versatile Secures $20 Million Series A Investment

Insight Partners

Versatile’s AI and IoT platform, CraneView®, increases efficiency, safety and cost-savings on any construction site

San Francisco, CA (December 3, 2020) — Versatile®, a company using machine learning and AI to optimize construction processes, today announced that it has raised $20 million in Series A funding. The round was led by Insight Partners and Entree Capital, and joined by previous investors Robert Bosch Venture Capital GmbH, Root Ventures, Conductive Ventures, and veteran construction technology entrepreneurs Leigh Jasper and Rob Phillpot. The new funding will allow Versatile to continue to rapidly scale its award-winning product across the $10 trillion global construction industry.

“You can only improve what you can measure, and at Versatile we are just scratching the surface of what we can do to create value for our users and use data to turn jobsites into controlled manufacturing with fast feedback loops,” said Meirav Oren, co-founder and CEO of Versatile. “We are thrilled to receive continued support from top-tier investors. This accomplishment is a testament to our industry, and I can’t wait to serve more teams, helping to make the professionals of our industry even better at what they are already great at.”

Leveraging AI and IoT, Versatile’s CraneView® captures and analyzes thousands of data points to deliver real-time insights on jobsite performance and streamline decision-making. Mounted under the hook of any crane, this first-of-its-kind technology offers unparalleled production data on any jobsite — including information on materials, redundancies, construction progress and crane utilization — and empowers project teams to work safer, faster, and enable a manufacturing approach to the way we build. The new funding will accelerate growth and availability of the solution, as well as the development of new, AI-based capabilities to create more connected insights for a variety of users.

“Investing in Versatile was an easy decision given how naturally their product fits the job site workflows, its high ROI, and their customer feedback about the value and experience of utilizing the CraneView solution,” said Nikitas Koutoupes, Managing Director at Insight Partners, who is also joining Versatile’s board.

Construction accounts for 13% of global GDP and is responsible for the buildings, roads, and infrastructure that power the ways people live, work and travel. A $265 billion annual profit pool awaits disruptors according to McKinsey & Company, and demand for construction technology solutions that increase efficiencies rapidly grew in 2020. Versatile provides a powerful, non-intrusive solution for the construction market, transforming traditionally time-consuming, manual processes through in-depth understanding of the efficiencies and opportunities to boost productivity and safety of any project. CraneView® is being used by top General Contractors on projects across the U.S. and Canada.

About Versatile

Headquartered in Los Altos, CA, Versatile creates technology that gives construction professionals unmatched visibility into their production rates.​ By delivering the right data to the right people at the right time while naturally fitting existing processes, a fragmented industry becomes a controllable manufacturing process. The result? Increased productivity, predictability and safety with the insights needed to manage and bid future projects more competitively.

Want to learn more? Visit: https://www.versatile.ai, follow us on Twitter @versatileai and LinkedIn or email us at letstalk@versatile.ai.

About Insight Partners

Insight Partners is a leading global venture capital and private equity firm investing in high-growth technology and software ScaleUp companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. Founded in 1995, Insight Partners has invested in more than 400 companies worldwide and has raised through a series of funds more than $30 billion in capital commitments. Insight’s mission is to find, fund, and work successfully with visionary executives, providing them with practical, hands-on software expertise to foster long-term success. Across its people and its portfolio, Insight encourages a culture around a belief that ScaleUp companies and growth create opportunity for all. For more information on Insight and all its investments, visit insightpartners.com or follow us on Twitter @insightpartners.

 

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Baird Capital Invests in HSP Group

Baird Capital

December 3, 2020 – Baird Capital announced today that it recently invested in HSP Group, a technology-enabled business services firm focused on helping US and European companies expand globally and manage their international operations.HSP Group Logo

HSP Group provides headquarters-based finance, tax, legal, and HR personnel with a simplified, turnkey approach to ensure efficient operations, full compliance with local regulations, and needed consistency across each geography.

“We are extremely pleased to help Larry Harding and the founding team at HSP Group launch their operations, and accelerate their expansion and service offerings,” said Benedict Rocchio, Partner with Baird Capital. “We witnessed first-hand the growth of one of our former portfolio companies under Larry’s leadership, and the opportunity to partner again is exciting for our firm.”

Larry Harding, Founder & CEO of HSP Group said, “Baird really knows our market, and our relationship is built on a solid foundation of trust. I couldn’t be happier to be working with them as we focus on making HSP Group the client-preferred provider of global expansion services.”

HSP Group focuses on offering the following technology-enabled services to support the international operations of its clients:

  • Global support services, including legal entity management solutions, statutory accounting & international tax compliance, employer of record (EoR) services, global payroll processing, and HR administration.
  • Consulting solutions, including specialized services like international tax advice, ad hoc and special project assistance, as-needed HR support, global mobility, VAT optimization, legal entity setup and/or rationalization, and project management (including implementation / onboarding / transformation services).
  • M&A transaction services, including International Readiness support, and other solutions helping ensure buy-side success with the more challenging multinational aspects of a carve-out acquisition.

For more information on Baird Capital’s investment strategy, click here.

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DOCAUTHORITY raises additional $3.25mm to save the world and its unstructured data files AXA Venture Partners leads Financing Round to Expand Growth

AXA

DocAuthority, the data governance platform built for both technical teams and business users, today announced that it has raised a $3.25 million Series A-1 funding round led by AXA Venture Partners. Returning investors ff Venture Capital and 2B Angels, along with UpVentures Capital, also invested. Manish Agarwal, General Partner-New York at AXA Venture Partners, will join the Board of Directors. The funds will be used to support the company’s growth within existing markets and expansion into new ones.

DocAuthority’s software is central to an enterprise’s data governance program, providing its customers with the industry’s most advanced way to manage their unstructured data and a clear line of sight to their regulated or commercially-sensitive files. Knowing where a company’s files are and who has access to them is the first step in reducing risk and increasing security. “You cannot protect what you cannot find,” says Chief Revenue Officer Colin Woodland. “Especially because of today’s distributed workforces, our customers use our software to identify vulnerabilities to malicious actors. No one else can work with unstructured data as effectively and efficiently as can DocAuthority, and our customers find great value in the software. We also find that most of them are able to reduce their data storage costs by identifying and eliminating duplicate and obsolete files. We think of ourselves as a profit center for our customers.”

An ever-expanding panoply of privacy laws, including GDPR (Europe), CCPA (California), POPI-A (South Africa-which includes criminal penalties for management in certain cases) and LGPD (Brazil) are focusing companies’ attention on compliance to satisfy their customers’ demands around data security and to avoid fines and possible criminal penalties. “We are proud to be our customers’ first line of defense in their overall strategy to live up to customer and legal demands,” says Steve Abbott, DocAuthority’s CEO. “We truly look to form a partnership with our customers so we can better understand their goals.”
Abbott continued, “that is why we are proud to have AXA Venture Partners as an investor in that vision. They understand the commercial needs created by today’s regulatory environment and their guidance will allow us to leapfrog our competitors as we address real world business demands.”
According to Agarwal, “we are thrilled to be joining the DocAuthority team. Their product is not a ‘nice-to-have,’ it is a ‘need-to-have,’ and their rapid growth and marquis customers attest to the high quality services the company offers. With DocAuthority’s focus on protecting its customers from attack, complying with government mandates and saving data storage costs, we are glad to work with Steve and his team to help grow the organization.”

About DocAuthority
DocAuthority was founded in 2015 and is headquartered in Ra’anana, Israel, with offices in London and Atlanta, Georgia. Focusing on the GRC space, DocAuthority uses proven and performance-optimized algorithms to automatically create categories of information from unstructured data within an enterprise’s files. This approach saves time, effort and money when managing their data. Whether it is managing retention periods, controlling access to personal data, the classification of sensitive data or another information governance task, DocAuthority ensures an economical and efficient process.

About AXA Venture Partners
AXA Venture Partners (AVP) is a global venture capital firm investing in high-growth, technology enabled companies. AVP has built, in less than five years, a unique investment platform specialized in tech investments with $800 million of assets under management through three pillars of investment expertise: early stage, growth stage, and fund of funds. To date, AVP has invested in more than 45 companies and more than 20 funds. The AVP team operates globally with offices in San Francisco, New York, London, Paris, and Hong Kong. Beyond investments, AVP provides unique access to business development opportunities helping portfolio companies to scale globally and accelerate their growth. More details here: www.axavp.com
About ff Venture Capital
ff Venture Capital (ffVC) is a seed and early-stage venture capital firm based in New York City. Founded in 2008, the firm invests, often as the lead investor, in growing technology and technology-enabled companies with the potential to become high-value, market-moving businesses across emerging industries, including artificial intelligence, robotics, cybersecurity, drones, enterprise software, and FinTech. More details here: www.ffvc.com

About 2B Angels
2B Angels is a leading Israel-based venture capital fund, focused on growing early-stage ventures with deep technology into category-leading companies. Founded in 2009, 2B Angels’ approach is centered around teaming up with exceptional entrepreneurs, supporting them and leveraging the team’s industry experience. Over the last decade, 2B Angels has been one of Israel’s most active venture capital funds with over 60 investments in a variety of sectors, including Cyber-Security, FinTech (specific use cases), AI & ML, Automotive/Mobility, HR Tech & Education Technology, among others. The firm in based in Tel Aviv. More details here: www.2b-angels.com.

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Why We Invested in Arctic Wolf – Ending Cyber Risk

Adams Street

Dec 03, 2020 Insights

Adams Street is excited to announce our follow-on investment in Arctic Wolf, a SaaS-based security operations platform that allows businesses of all sizes to dramatically improve their security posture without adding costly cybersecurity professionals.

Massive Market Need

Ending cyber risk is an audacious goal. The velocity at which large-scale cybersecurity breaches garner news headlines is accelerating. Especially in recent months, cybercrime has been up as businesses are increasingly vulnerable with employees working remotely. The common solution has been to deploy new cybersecurity tools and see what sticks. After all, there is no shortage of products in the market. This strategy, however, typically creates new challenges for security teams: excessive alerting, complexity of managing myriad products, and difficulty in hiring security professionals to actually run the show. As Arctic Wolf CEO, Brian NeSmith, observes, “organizations are realizing that they don’t have a tools problem, but an operational one”.

Organizations are realizing that they don’t have a tools problem, but an operational one.

— Brian NeSmith, CEO of Arctic Wolf

The major challenge of implementing a comprehensive security program is operationalizing disparate sources of information and responding appropriately to security threats. At the center of this challenge is an organization’s security operations center (SOC), which refers to the people, processes, and technologies that a company puts in place to detect and respond to cybersecurity threats. SOCs are critical to modern security architectures yet are expensive to configure, complicated to operate, and require a significant human capital investment. This challenge has given rise to a category of businesses offering Managed Detection and Response (MDR) services or a “SOC-as-a-Service”, which allow organizations to add 24/7 threat monitoring, detection, and response via a turnkey solution. According to Gartner, 25% of organizations will be using MDR services by 2025.

Superior AI-Based Solution

Arctic Wolf’s cloud-native security operations solution is leading the pack within the MDR space. The platform integrates with a customer’s existing tech stack to collect over 65 billion events daily across cloud, network, and endpoint. Using advanced AI, Arctic Wolf correlates all of these captured events with industry-leading threat intelligence to identify possible behavioral patterns of a cyberattack. From there, it’s time to act. Arctic Wolf has a dedicated “Concierge Team” of security operations specialists that work 24/7 to triage alerts, manage threats, and offer guidance on how a customer can mitigate issues in the future. The product is easy to implement, effective, and can be the difference in preventing a cyber breach. Arctic Wolf continues to innovate and broaden their product offering to include capabilities like risk management and cloud monitoring. The effectiveness of the platform has underpinned tremendous growth for the Company, which saw 106% YoY growth in subscription revenue and 301% YoY growth in the number of customers using multiple solutions.

The effectiveness of the platform has underpinned tremendous growth for the Company, which saw 106% YoY growth in subscription revenue and 301% YoY growth in the number of customers using multiple solutions

Deeply Experienced Management Team

It is rare to meet a cybersecurity executive that brings as much experience and industry vision as NeSmith, CEO and co-founder of Arctic Wolf. Scaling cybersecurity companies is not new to him. Previously, he served as CEO of Blue Coat Systems, a leading provider of content and web security. As CEO, he oversaw Blue Coat’s IPO, acquired 8 companies, and grew the business from $5mm annual revenue to $500mm revenue and 1,300+ employees. Brian has surrounded himself with a team of experienced executives with deep security expertise. The management team brings a wealth of experience from other leading companies such as Cylance, CrowdStrike, Code42, and FireEye. When Adams Street originally invested in Arctic Wolf in 2018, we knew that they were up to something special. NeSmith and team continue to impress with their product vision and execution. If there is any company that can end cyber risk, Adams Street believes that Arctic Wolf stands the best chance.

Important Considerations: This information (the “Paper”) is provided for educational purposes only and is not investment advice or an offer or sale of any security or investment product or investment advice. Offerings are made only pursuant to a private offering memorandum containing important information. Statements in this Paper are made as of the date of this Paper unless stated otherwise, and there is no implication that the information contained herein is correct as of any time subsequent to such date. All information has been obtained from sources believed to be reliable and current, but accuracy cannot be guaranteed. References herein to Adams Street Partners’ portfolio companies are not to be considered a recommendation or solicitation for any such company. Projections or forward-looking statements contained in the Paper are only estimates of future results or events that are based upon assumptions made at the time such projections or statements were developed or made; actual results may be significantly different from the projections. Also, general economic factors, which are not predictable, can have a material impact on the reliability of projections or forward-looking statements.

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PDFTron Acquires PDF Editing and Translation Innovator Iceni Technology

Acquisition Adds EMEA Footprint and 11,000 Global Customers, Deepens PDF Editing and Translation Product Offering

Market-leading provider of document technology solutions for software developers, PDFTron Systems Inc., today announces the acquisition of Norwich, UK-based Iceni Technology Ltd., specialists in PDF editing and translation software and producers of a series of firsts in the field of PDF manipulation.

PDFTron Founder and CTO Ivan Nincic stated, “At PDFTron, we partner with innovative companies that are leaders in their fields and offer superior value propositions to their customers. With Iceni, we’re excited to bring on an incredible team with over 15 years of developer experience innovating PDF editing and automated PDF translation. Both companies stand to benefit from each other’s strengths as we combine our offerings to power the next generation of document processing applications.”

“With PDFTron’s scale and broad platform, we can now provide our 11,000 customers worldwide greater value in terms of access to hundreds of unique PDFTron SDK features, top-quality rendering performance, and market-leading support service and responsiveness,” stated Iceni Co-Founder and Director Simon Crowfoot. “We also see synergies in the document understanding field, where our advanced PDF editing and translation features naturally augment PDFTron’s content extraction, document reflow, form and invoice recognition, and next-gen search capabilities using Deep Learning and AI.”

The Iceni acquisition marks PDFTron’s entry into the European market and builds on recent acquisitions of North American enterprise document software providers ActivePDF and BCL Technologies earlier this year. PDFTron continues to be engaged in a global search for best-in-class technology to add to its growing, end-to-end document SDK platform, including the #1-ranked commercial PDF SDK.

With PDFTron’s planned integration of the trailblazing Iceni Infix PDF Editor and its Infix TransPDF functionality, PDFTron customers can now look forward to giving their users a deep Word processor-style editing experience on PDFs and accurate, push-button translations of PDFs in 60+ languages across all platforms.

About Iceni Technology Ltd.

Formed in 1996 with a background in pre-press, newspapers and PostScript, today, Iceni Technology is an established software development company based in the city of Norwich in the UK. Iceni continues to innovate in translation and web-based PDF interaction, having previously produced a series of firsts in the field of PDF manipulation. Its products on desktop, server and web hosts, including the Infix PDF editor, are translated into most European languages for its over 11,000 professional, corporate, educator, and estate agent customers in 39 different countries. For more information, visit www.iceni.com.

About PDFTron Systems Inc.

Headquartered in Vancouver, BC, PDFTron is a premier global provider of high-performance document processing technology serving customers across a broad spectrum of industries. PDFTron’s market-leading SDK drives digital transformation and powers next generation software applications with dynamic document viewing, annotation, processing, and conversion capabilities, as well as advanced features such as document understanding, data extraction, and redaction. PDFTron technology supports all major platforms and dozens of unique file types, including support for PDF, MS Office, and CAD formats. For more information, visit www.pdftron.com.

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Novacap Acquires Logibec

Novacap

Montreal, December 2, 2020 – Novacap, one of Canada’s leading private equity firms, in partnership with Investissement Québec, today announced that it has acquired Logibec, a Montreal-based healthcare software company. The transaction brings back Logibec to Canadian ownership.

 

« We are grateful for the enthusiastic support of Novacap and its partners in this transaction, which not only brings our company back to Canadian ownership, but also positions us for expansion outside of North America. Our most recent breakthrough in foreign markets confirms that Logibec has invested in the right growth areas such as data management solutions. The Novacap team understands our Canadian heritage and is well positioned to support us in the next phase of our development. »

Marc BrunetCEO, Logibec

« Novacap has always been committed to fostering entrepreneurship and innovation right here in Quebec, and Logibec has epitomized that since inception. Novacap has a long history of successfully partnering with Canadian companies and helping them grow significantly. We are very excited to lead this investment alongside Investissement Québec and management in Logibec, a flagship provider of IT and software solutions to the Canadian healthcare ecosystem and support the company in its international expansion »

Pascal TremblayPresident, CEO and Managing Partner, Novacap

Founded in 1982, Logibec is one of Canada’s largest healthcare technology companies and is entirely dedicated to contributing to the better delivery of patient care and to assisting healthcare managers in their day to day operations through technology.

“We are grateful for the enthusiastic support of Novacap and its partners in this transaction, which not only brings our company back to Canadian ownership, but also positions us for expansion outside of North America,” said Marc Brunet, CEO, Logibec.

“Our most recent breakthrough in foreign markets confirms that Logibec has invested in the right growth areas such as data management solutions. The Novacap team understands our Canadian heritage and is well positioned to support us in the next phase of our development.”

“Novacap has always been committed to fostering entrepreneurship and innovation right here in Quebec, and Logibec has epitomized that since inception,” said Pascal Tremblay, President, CEO and Managing Partner, Novacap. “Novacap has a long history of successfully partnering with Canadian companies and helping them grow significantly. We are very excited to lead this investment alongside Investissement Québec and management in Logibec, a flagship provider of IT and software solutions to the Canadian healthcare ecosystem and support the company in its international expansion.”

“Logibec has a long history of working in collaboration with private equity sponsors, and as their new partners, we are thrilled to support management’s growth initiatives and to contribute improving healthcare by bringing innovative solutions to the market,” said Eric Desrosiers, Senior Partner, Novacap. “Our investor group is committed to providing Logibec all the resources it needs to develop new solutions and expand its footprint in new geographies.”

“The investment that our government is making in Logibec is strategic for Québec’s position in this highly competitive sector. It will enable the company to remain among the leaders in information systems for the health and social services sector. The company will thus be able to focus on developing solutions essential to the quality of care offered to patients, particularly in hospitals,” said Pierre Fitzgibbon, Minister of the Economy and Innovation.

“We’re proud to be involved in this major investment, which is helping to bring Logibec’s ownership back to Québec and consolidate the vitality of our healthcare IT ecosystem. For more than four decades, the company has applied its expertise in our healthcare institutions, standing out because of its leading-edge technologies. Alongside solid financial partners like Novacap, Investissement Québec plans to continue supporting the players and key sectors of our economy in order to spotlight our know-how and grow our investments and exports,” said Guy LeBlanc, President and CEO of Investissement Québec.

Fasken Martineau Dumoulin LLP, Ernst Young LLP, Tectonic Advisory Services Inc., Crosslake Technologies, LLC and National Bank Financial Inc. acted as advisors to Novacap.

Logibec was formerly a portfolio company of GI Partners.

 

About Novacap

Founded in 1981, Novacap is a leading Canadian private equity firm with CA$3.6 billion of assets under management. Its distinct investment approach, based on deep operational expertise and an active partnership with entrepreneurs, has helped accelerate growth and create long-term value for its numerous portfolio companies. With an experienced management team and substantial financial resources, Novacap is well positioned to continue building world-class businesses. Backed by leading global institutional investors, Novacap’s deals typically include leveraged buyouts, management buyouts, add-on acquisitions, IPOs, and privatizations. Over the last 39 years, Novacap has invested in more than 90 companies and completed more than 140 add-on acquisitions. Novacap has offices in Brossard, Quebec and Toronto, Ontario. For more information, please visit www.novacap.ca.

About Logibec

Headquartered in Montreal, Canada for nearly 40 years, Logibec deploys information systems that span the clinical, operational, and business needs of complex healthcare organizations. Logibec’s clients are also empowered to improve and innovate by utilizing our industry-leading suite of actionable analytics solutions and advisory services.

For more information, visit www.logibec.com.

About Investissement Québec

Investissement Québec’s mission is to play an active role in Québec’s economic development by spurring business innovation, entrepreneurship and business acquisitions, as well as growth in investment and exports. Operating in all the province’s administrative regions, the Corporation supports the creation and growth of businesses of all sizes with investments and customized financial solutions. It also assists businesses by providing consulting services and other support measures, including technological assistance available from Investissement Québec – CRIQ. In addition, through Investissement Québec International, the Corporation also prospects for talent and foreign investment and assists businesses with export activities.

 

For further information: Novacap: Alexandra Troubetzkoy, NOVACAP, +1 450-651-5000 ext.291, atroubetzkoy@novacap.ca

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Speechmatics wins the Scale-up Award at Barclays’ High Growth and Entrepreneurs National Awards

IQ Capital

Speecmatics, based at Cambridge Science Park, has won the Scale-up Award at the Barclays’ annual High Growth and Entrepreneur National Awards ceremony.

The awards were announced by actor, television presenter and radio DJ, Reggie Yates, during a live stream virtual event last week.

A key note speech was given by businesswoman, entrepreneur and TV Dragon, Deborah Meaden.

Speechmatics powers applications that require mission-critical, accurate speech recognition through its any-context speech recognition engine. Speechmatics’ speech recognition technology is used by enterprises in scenarios such as contact centers, legal, compliance, eDiscovery, security, media & entertainment and software. Speechmatics processes millions of hours of transcription worldwide every month in 30+ languages.

Having pioneered machine learning voice engineering, Speechmatics is enabling companies to build applications that detect and transcribe voice in any context and in real-time. Its neural networks consider acoustics, languages, dialects, multiple speakers, punctuation, capitalization, context and implicit meanings.

Katy Wigdahl, CEO, Speechmatics (pictured) said: “It has been a phenomenally challenging year for businesses across the world. Winning the scale-up of the year award for consistent and rapid growth means even more to our business in testing times. We have focused on building an innovative, automated technology that is vital to the growth and scale of many use cases and markets which has become even more critical during the pandemic.”

Juliet Rogan, National Head of High Growth at Barclays, said: “The awards are a celebration of the exceptional innovation and leadership entrepreneurs show, disproportionately driving job growth, attracting investment, and creating innovative products and services. In what has been a difficult time for businesses due to the coronavirus outbreak it is even more important than ever we celebrate and recognise their achievements. Entrepreneurs are fundamental to the UK’s economic competitive advantage, that shape our todays as well as tomorrows.”

A national judging panel made up of key industry leaders and influencers selected the overall national winners.

The awards bring the full entrepreneurial community together. This year, for the first time, Barclaycard joined the event alongside Barclays Rise and Eagle Labs as partners of the Awards. This group wide initiative started five years ago and forms an integral part of its support for entrepreneurship across the bank.

Originally published here.

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Bizzabo Raises $138 Million to Power the Hybrid Future of Professional Events

Insight Partners

Investment led by Insight Partners will help the company meet global demand amid COVID-19 & beyond

NEW YORK, Dec. 02, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) —  Bizzabo, the world’s leading Event Success Platform, today announced it has raised $138 million in Series E funding. The investment is led by Insight Partners, with participation from previous investors, Viola Growth, Next47, and OurCrowd. Bizzabo will use the investment to meet surging demand for its platform globally and expand its category-leading capabilities as COVID-19 reshapes the future of the professional events industry. With the round, Bizzabo sets a new precedent for the largest private investment in an event technology platform.Without in-person events, organizations have turned to virtual conferences and trade shows to connect with customers and grow their business. With that, virtual events have enabled organizers to safely reach a wide audience, ensure event ROI, and deliver valuable data points to shape future strategies. Given the benefits, even with a COVID-19 vaccine imminent, virtual events aren’t going away anytime soon. Looking forward, events that combine in-person experiences with digital components will become the new normal.“The future of professional events isn’t virtual-only,” said Eran Ben-Shushan, CEO & Co-Founder of Bizzabo. “Our data shows very clearly that while virtual events have major benefits, attendees and businesses want to get back to live events. To stay relevant, marketers and event organizers will need to implement a hybrid strategy that blends together the best parts of virtual and in-person experiences.”Bizzabo’s event success platform empowers organizations to manage, measure, and grow professional events across the globe and in any format — virtual, in-person, or hybrid.“COVID-19 has permanently transformed the professional events category,” said Matt Gatto, a Managing Director at Insight Partners, who will join the Bizzabo board of directors. “Bizzabo’s impressive growth and momentum began pre-pandemic and accelerated during it as they launched the industry’s first end-to-end event technology solution. Their pedigree in both in-person and virtual events and their impressive execution capabilities have them well-positioned to lead this rapidly evolving space. We are excited to partner with their leadership team and to support them in this new phase of growth.”

In the past year, Bizzabo has seen revenue explode over 100 percent. This is powered by a substantial shift upmarket in 2020, with a significant portion of its customer base coming from the enterprise segment. Bizzabo has powered events for the world’s leading Fortune 100 in eCommerce, technology, education and media. Bizzabo’s Event Success Platform is used to support hybrid, virtual, and in-person professional events for enterprise and mid-market organizations across industries and verticals.

“Our platform has seen unprecedented demand this year,” said Ben-Shushan. “Compared to the year prior, the number of events organized through us has grown 65 percent. Additionally, the number of attendees registering for events with Bizzabo has grown 500 percent, while overall usage is up 150x. With a vaccine likely and more hybrid events in the future, we anticipate even greater growth. Bizzabo has been the category leader, experiencing hyper-growth both pre-pandemic and during the virtual transition, we are excited to continue to lead the market forward by doubling down on product, technology, and user experience, to help organizations unlock the power of hybrid experiences.”

To meet global demand for its platform, Bizzabo will use its investment to build a comprehensive technology that successfully integrates the experiences of virtual and in-person — for both organizers and attendees. The company will also expand its go-to-market operations and triple its engineering, product, and experience teams with the opening of two new offices in Europe in the first half of 2021. In addition, Bizzabo is looking to hire over a hundred new employees, globally, in 2021.

“This investment, led by ScaleUp software investor Insight Partners, is a testament to how Bizzabo is leading the charge in the future of event technology,” added Ben-Shushan. “Events have changed overnight and event technology needs to move as quickly.”

About Bizzabo

Bizzabo is the only Event Success Platform. Bizzabo’s all-in-one event software enables in-person, virtual, and hybrid events to deliver unique attendee experiences through intelligent and intent-based personalized engagement. We help companies measure, manage and scale events towards key business outcomes, empowering every organizer, marketer, exhibitor, and attendee to unleash the power of professional events. The company was founded by Boaz Katz, Alon Alroy, and Eran Ben-Shushan, and has more than 175 employees in its New York, Tel-Aviv and Kyiv offices. For more information on Bizzabo, visit www.bizzabo.com or follow us on Twitter @bizzabo

About Insight Partners

Insight Partners is a leading global venture capital and private equity firm investing in high-growth technology and software ScaleUp companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. Founded in 1995, Insight Partners has invested in more than 400 companies worldwide and has raised through a series of funds more than $30 billion in capital commitments. Insight’s mission is to find, fund, and work successfully with visionary executives, providing them with practical, hands-on software expertise to foster long-term success. Across its people and its portfolio, Insight encourages a culture around a belief that ScaleUp companies and growth create opportunity for all. For more information on Insight and all its investments, visit insightpartners.com or follow us on Twitter @insightpartners.

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