ISAI EXPANSION III REACHES ITS €300M HARD CAP AND CLOSES ITS FUNDRAISING

One year after a 1st closing at €190m, ISAI Expansion III, ISAI's Tech Growth / Tech Buyout fund, closes its fundraising after exceeding its target size of €250m and reaching its hard cap of €300m.    

ISAI has successfully closed its third Expansion vintage fund, dedicated to profitable tech SMEs. In keeping with its DNA as a fund for entrepreneurs, ISAI has once again benefited from the strong support of the Tech and Digital entrepreneur community.

Pierre Martini, Managing Partner of ISAI and head of the Expansion strategy, commented: « Every time we raise funds, we expand our community of entrepreneur-LPs, which now numbers almost 500 members, mainly from the tech and digital sectors. Almost all the new LPs are either entrepreneurs we have supported as investors or are recommended by our community. »

ISAI Expansion III's unique positioning has also won over new high-profile institutional investors, who account for more than 60% of the fund's final size. These include several funds of funds (such as Flexstone Partners or Swen Capital Partners, which are joining Eurazeo and an international fund of funds); several public entities (such as the Fonds de Réserve pour les Retraites, which is joining Bpifrance and the European Investment Fund), as well as banks, insurance companies and family offices.

In total, half of the amounts raised came from historic investors, and the other half from new investors.

Caroline Gibert, Head of Investor Relations & ESG, added: « ISAI benefits from a high level of confidence among its existing investors and a consistent investment discipline that has demonstrated its ability to deliver a high DPI. These two factors were decisive in establishing relationships with new LPs, particularly institutional investors, to meet the hard cap set for this fundraising effort. »    

A fund designed to pursue the same strategy as its predecessor

ISAI Expansion III, which initially had a target size of €250m, closed its fundraising with a hard cap of €300m, double that of its predecessor. This reasonable and well-considered increase in size will enable the Fund to pursue the ISAI Expansion strategy that has proved to be successful for over 12 years.  

 « We are, and wish to remain, an investment company serving entrepreneurs who are generally undertaking their first expansion capital or LBO transaction. Although oversubscribed, we decided to close the Fund at the hard cap. This will enable us to remain perfectly in line with our core strategy without compromising our growth and profitability criteria. Our first two funds have achieved 'top quartile' performance to date in Europe, and we want to maintain the discipline that will enable us to maintain this level of performance. » explained Jean-David Chamboredon, CEO and co-founder at ISAI.

« You don't change a formula that works. Since 2013, we have supported 20 companies in Tech Growth / Tech Buyout transactions, and successfully managed the exit of 12 of them, including aDvens, Labelium, Pandat Finance, Invoke and Ascentiel Groupe, the most recent at the end of 2024. Most of our exits are secondary LBOs, typically led by private equity firms. » continued Nicolas Martineau, General Partner at ISAI Expansion.

This new Fund will support between 12 and 15 companies with investments between €10m and €50m (excluding co-investments by our LPs for investments up to €80m), taking minority or majority stakes in France, Southern Europe, Switzerland and the Benelux countries, via Growth Buyouts (companies with sales of at least €10m and EBITDA of €2m) or Tech Growth deals (profitable companies with annual growth of more than 25-30%).

A first portfolio investment, representative of the Fund's strategy

ISAI Expansion III's first investment was announced last September, with Staffmatch, a leading player in the temporary employment sector in France with a proprietary digital platform combined with its own network of agencies.

The deal, which supports the growth acceleration of the business, is a minority OBO with limited financial leverage.

« Staffmatch is a perfect illustration of our Tech-enabled approach, which aims to select companies operating in traditional sectors whose digital approach delivers above-market growth and profitability. ISAI Expansion III could invest around 1/3 of its portfolio in companies of this type, with the remainder targeting tech companies such as Saas, managed services or marketplaces. » concluded Christophe Poupinel, General Partner at ISAI Expansion.

ISAI Expansion III is classified as Article 8 under the SFDR regulations.

Advisors

Law firm: Goodwin Procter (France) LLP, Arnaud David et Barbara Botbol

About ISAI Expansion

For over 12 years, ISAI Expansion has been supporting Tech and Digital entrepreneurs who have chosen the path to profitability via Tech Buyout or Tech Growth operations. ISAI Expansion selects profitable, fast-growing companies with revenues of at least €10 million and invests, either as a majority or minority shareholder, alongside the founders and/or managers. ISAI Expansion has also supported numerous successful Tech successes, including Labelium, aDvens, Theodo, Invoke and Ascentiel Groupe.
ISAI Expansion is a strategy of ISAI Gestion (« ISAI »), one of the pioneers in the French Tech ecosystem. Co-founded in 2009 " by and for " Tech entrepreneurs, ISAI gathers today near to 500 Entrepreneurs-LPs alongside major Institutional investors.
With offices in Paris and NYC, ISAI manages more than €1.0bn across four investment strategies: Early-Stage Venture, Corporate Venture, Growth Lending and Tech Buyout. 
The company is a UNPRI signatory and a committed player in inclusive and low-carbon Tech.
For more information: www.isai.fr 

About Bpifrance

Bpifrance Investissement is the management company that handles Bpifrance's equity investments. Bpifrance is the French national investment bank. It finances businesses – at every stage of their development – through loans, guarantees, equity investments and export insurances. Bpifrance also provides extra financial services (training, consultancy) to help entrepreneurs meet their challenges (innovation, export…).
For more information, please visit: www.bpifrance.fr and presse.bpifrance.fr - Follow us on Twitter: @Bpifrance - @BpifrancePresse

About the European Investment Fund

The EIF is part of the EIB Group. Its main goal is to support microenterprises and small businesses by helping them to access finance and venture capital. The EIF also actively supports climate fund investments with a strong focus on environmental sustainability. Its activities foster EU objectives promoting innovation, research and development, entrepreneurship, growth and job creation.
Website: www.eib.org/press; Press Office: +352 4379-21000 — press@eib.org
Contact: Christophe Alix, c.alix@eib.org tel.: +352 4379-84303; mobile: +33 6 11 81 30 99

Press contacts

ISAI |Caroline Gibert | caroline.gibert@isai.fr | M : +33 (0)6 99 91 06 60
Kablé Communication | Catherine Kablé | catherine.kable@kable-communication.com |M : +33 (0)6 82 25 73 85            
Illy Benyoussef | illy.benyoussef@kable-communication.com | M : +33 (0)6 28 09 65 41

OFFROAD RAISES €1.5 MILLION FROM AXELEO CAPITAL, ISAI, AND RING CAPITAL TO STRENGTHEN ITS INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS FOR ROAD AND PUBLIC SPACE MANAGEMENT

OFFROAD, a specialist in road infrastructure management leveraging cutting-edge technology, announces a €1.5 million funding round from Axeleo Capital, ISAI, and Ring Capital. This funding will enable OFFROAD to strengthen its technical and sales teams, serving local governments and public works companies.

Local authorities face numerous challenges in road infrastructure management: road safety, compliance and regulation, maintenance cost management... To address these issues, OFFROAD offers an innovative solution based on two key technologies, the result of several years of R&D: the "BrainKit," an onboard 3D digitization device, and artificial intelligence for data processing.

Concretely, the "BrainKit" makes it possible to accurately map the infrastructure environment and collect, in a single pass, a wide range of data. Artificial intelligence enables the production of detailed inventories and compliance studies: evaluation of dangerous curves, non-compliant signage, improvement of urban accessibility, creation of topographic plans.

For local authorities and their service providers, this is an opportunity to obtain both a global and precise vision of the state of the roads and to prevent additional costs due to increased degradation in order to optimize the management of roadways and public spaces.

OFFROAD stands out with a solution capable of centralizing and harmonizing data for all stakeholders involved in road infrastructure management, thereby ensuring optimized collaboration.

Since 2020, OFFROAD has convinced around thirty local authorities (departments, public intermunicipal cooperation establishments (EPCI), and municipalities) as well as numerous private actors. With a team of 10 employees, proven technology, and several thousand kilometers analyzed, the company now aims to take a new step forward.

With the support of Axeleo Capital, ISAI – through its Build Venture fund – and Ring Capital, OFFROAD plans to strengthen its technical and sales teams; increase the production pace of its BrainKit sensor to meet growing demand; and accelerate its development.

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About OFFROAD

Founded in 2020, OFFROAD is a start-up specializing in the optimized management of road infrastructures. Thanks to its BrainKit technology, OFFROAD aims to revolutionize road infrastructure management by transforming field data into directly actionable information.

About Axeleo Capital

Axeleo Proptech I is a €40 million venture capital fund dedicated to startups in the proptech, contech, and energy sectors in Europe. Axeleo Capital is an active venture capital firm in the early-stage tech scene in Europe, supported by a large number of entrepreneurs and investors. Axeleo Capital offers startup founders a unique support framework combining equity investment, operational and strategic coaching, and an active ecosystem of over 100 high-level partners and mentors. Its Proptech Contech investments include GarantMe, Mob Energy, Beanstock, Pionix, Oculai, Grane...
For more information: https://www.axc.vc/

About ISAI Build Venture

Created in partnership with Bouygues, ISAI Build Venture is a global investment fund that participates as a co-investor in seed to Series C rounds for startups offering solutions that accelerate the transformation and decarbonization of the construction, real estate, mobility infrastructure, and energy industries. ISAI Build Venture is a strategy of ISAI Gestion (“ISAI”), one of the pioneers of investment in French Tech created in 2009.
The company is a signatory of the UNPRI and an active player in inclusive and low-carbon Tech.
For more information: www.isai.fr

About Ring Capital

A dedicated investment ecosystem for impact investing, Ring Capital finances and supports entrepreneurs innovating to offer vital solutions to major social and environmental challenges, through four investment strategies and a venture philanthropy fund.
Specialized in financing young impact startups in pre-seed, Generations powered by EDHEC supports ambitious solutions to the major environmental and social challenges of future generations. Born from the collaboration between Ring Capital and EDHEC Business School, this fund benefits from their respective expertise and ecosystems, as well as the support of four venture partners and experienced business angels: Sandra Armstrong (ex-LVMH, Firmenich), Jean-François Drweski (Amazon Web Services, ex-50 Partners), Didier Kuhn (50 Partners, +80 operations), and Julia Perroux (50 Partners, Good Goût, Unilever).
For more information: www.ringcp.com

Press Contacts

OFFROAD
contact@offroad.works

Axeleo Capital
Dimitri Kremp – dkremp@axc.vc

ISAI
Kablé Communication

• Catherine Kablé – catherine.kable@kable-communication.com – +33 6 82 25 73 85

• Illy Benyoussef – illy.benyoussef@kable-communication.com – +33 6 28 09 65 41

Ring Capital
Victoire Cruanes-Lubrano – victoire.cruanes-lubrano@ringcp.com – +33 6 65 07 66 86

COBEPA ENTERS INTO EXCLUSIVE DISCUSSIONS TO ACQUIRE ASCENTIEL GROUPE FROM IK PARTNERS AND ISAI

Brussels/Rueil-Malmaison, 6 November 2024 – Cobepa is pleased to announce that it has entered into exclusive discussions with IK Partners (“IK”), ISAI Gestion (“ISAI”) and Bertrand Liber to acquire a majority stake in Ascentiel Groupe ("Ascentiel" or “the Group"), a leading digital insurance brokerage platform providing Property & Casualty ("P&C") cover for individuals and small businesses in several specialty niches. The acquisition will be made in partnership with the management team and is subject to consultation with the works council. The transaction is expected to close before the end of 2024 and financial terms are not disclosed.

Founded in 1970, Ascentiel has established itself as a leading digital brokerage platform specialising in the distribution and management of non-life insurance contracts for both individuals and professionals. Having developed significant expertise in the field of car insurance, the Group mainly focuses on near-to-sub-standard motor insurance risks, leveraging the prominence of its flagship brand Assurpeople.com and its fully digital customer experience. The Group covers the entire insurance distribution cycle, from product co-development with insurers to underwriting or contract and claim management.

Over recent years, Ascentiel has continued to diversify its offering to include attractive new specialty products, most notably through the highly successful launch of Airbag, a wholesale brokerage platform specialised in inherent defect insurance for construction professionals. Since then and with the support of IK and ISAI, the Group has achieved several strategic objectives and successfully executed add-on acquisitions, including Atara in 2022 and NIBW in 2024. The acquisition of Atara strengthened the Group's position in the pet insurance sector, while the acquisition of NIBW facilitated the Group's geographic expansion into Spain and Portugal. At present, Ascentiel employs over 180 people who are based across its headquarters in Rueil-Malmaison as well as its offices in Aix-en-Provence and Madrid. In partnership with leading insurance companies operating in France, Ascentiel manages contracts for over 220,000 end-clients. 

About Ascentiel Groupe

Founded in 1970, Ascentiel Groupe ("Ascentiel") has evolved into a premier insurance brokerage group, encompassing eight distinct brands, catering to both individual and professional insurance markets. Ascentiel offers a comprehensive suite of insurance solutions, ranging from auto, animal health and home coverage for individuals to specialised products for commercial clients, including decennial liability coverage for construction professionals and insurance for commercial vehicle fleets. Operating under delegated authorities, Ascentiel manages all aspects of policy lifecycle, from underwriting to claims management, ensuring top-tier service and compliance. For more information, visit ascentiel-groupe.com  

About Cobepa 

Cobepa is an independent, privately held investment company with offices in New York, Brussels, and Munich. Cobepa manages a diverse portfolio of private equity investments representing approximately €4.7 billion of equity capital. Cobepa invests in leading companies with superior business models, sustainable market positions and leading management teams.  For more information, visit cobepa.com

About IK Partners

IK Partners (“IK”) is a European private equity firm focused on investments in the Benelux, DACH, France, Nordics and the UK. Since 1989, IK has raised more than €17 billion of capital and invested in 195 European companies. IK supports companies with strong underlying potential, partnering with management teams and investors to create robust, well-positioned businesses with excellent long-term prospects. For more information, visit ikpartners.com.  

About ISAI Gestion

ISAI Gestion (« ISAI ») is one of the pioneers in the French Tech ecosystem. Co-founded in 2009 " by and for " Tech entrepreneurs, ISAI gathers today more than 450 Entrepreneurs-LPs alongside major Institutional Investors. With offices in Paris, London, Milan and NYC, ISAI manages c. €900 million across four investment strategies: Early-Stage Venture, Corporate Venture, Growth Lending and Tech Buyout. For more information, visit isai.vc

KESTRA RAISES $8M TO LEAD THE FUTURE OF ORCHESTRATION FOR BUSINESS-CRITICAL WORKFLOWS

• Funding Round: Kestra raised $8M in seed funding led by Alven, with existing investors ISAI & Axeleo doubling down, and notable technology leaders from dbtLabs, Airbyte, Datadog, Hugging Face, Talend, Algolia, Platform.sh.

• Growth and Adoption: Kestra is the fastest-growing open-source orchestration platform, having grown 10x from a year ago and rapidly expanding in North America and EMEA. Trusted by thousands of organizations, the platform orchestrates hundreds millions of workflows for mission-critical operations globally.

• Use of Funds: The funding will be used to support Kestra’s expansion, hiring efforts, and continued growth, with a focus on enterprise-grade functionality and supporting multiple cloud platforms through a vast plugin ecosystem.

PARIS, September 23, 2024 – Less than a year after its $3M pre-seed round, Kestra, the unified orchestration platform, today announced it has raised $8M in seed investment. Kestra is currently the fastest-growing open-source orchestration product in the market, executing several hundred million workflows, a tenfold increase in one year. Thousands of organizations, including several global enterprises, have trusted Kestra as the most production-ready and user-friendly platform to automate their mission-critical workflows.

Kestra’s funding round will drive its continued expansion across North America and EMEA, as organizations increasingly rely on its robust, enterprise-grade orchestration platform built on a strong open-source foundation. This funding round is led by Alven, alongside ISAI, Axeleo Capital, and numerous founders and CEOs from leading technology companies who have invested in Kestra during this round, including Tristan Handy (dbt Labs); Michel Tricot (Airbyte); Olivier Pomel (Datadog); Clement Delangue (Hugging Face); Bertrand Diard (Talend); Nicolas Dessaigne (Algolia); and Frédéric Plais (Platform.sh). The new capital will accelerate hiring and fuel the company’s growth strategy across North America and EMEA.

“At Alven, we partner with visionary teams that are redefining industries, and Kestra embodies this by unifying and simplifying how companies orchestrate their most critical processes. In a world where reliability and scalability are essential, Kestra excels at managing mission-critical workflows at scale, streamlining everything from data pipelines to infrastructure operations. This makes them essential, especially for large corporations. We believe they are on the path to becoming the modern Enterprise Orchestrator, transforming operations, and we’re proud to support them,” said Victor Charpentier, Alven.

Kestra’s open-source community is thriving with developers contributing to the product in business automation, data pipelines, AI applications, microservice coordination, and more. Its versatility is driven by a vast plugin ecosystem connecting to over 500 tools (including Databricks, Snowflake, dbt, Airbyte, Terraform, etc.), orchestrating at scale across all major cloud platforms (AWS, GCP, Azure, etc.). This broad approach and low barrier to entry make Kestra the only Unified Orchestration platform on the market, supporting all automation use cases and welcoming all user profiles. Kestra reduces tool proliferation, fosters internal knowledge sharing, and ensures future readiness.

“The orchestration market is fragmented with siloed solutions addressing specific job scenarios. Business leaders face challenges in unifying best practices and tools across data, infrastructure, business process management, microservices, and more. They seek a unified platform to streamline operations, and this is where Kestra excels. Our growing enterprise customers show there’s demand for an API-first, user-friendly product that unites teams, workflows, and pipelines of all types,” said Emmanuel Darras, CEO and Co-Founder of Kestra.

By supporting orchestration both as code and through an intuitive UI, Kestra appeals to all developers as well as non-engineers. It has also proven successful with IT teams that expect high performance and observability at scale. Kestra Enterprise's purpose-built features, such as reliable remote execution, integration with third-party secrets manager, and high availability, currently power business-critical workflows and event-driven applications in production for some of the most innovative companies.

“Our focus on scalability, real-time processing, and security is delivering results. Large organizations—including banks, retail companies, software providers, and government entities—are executing millions of workflows with Kestra. The platform excels even in highly specialized cases like network monitoring and real-time fraud detection. Most importantly, configuring and scheduling these workflows remains effortless, thanks to a language-agnostic, declarative syntax combined with webhooks and event-driven triggers,” said Ludovic Dehon, CTO and Co-Founder of Kestra.

For more information on Kestra, watch the company’s introductory video or discover Kestra’s GitHub repository.

About Kestra
Kestra Technologies, founded in 2021 by Emmanuel Darras (co-founder of Ankama) and Ludovic Dehon (AKHQ.io), is behind Kestra, an event-driven orchestration platform designed to simplify orchestration for both engineers and business users. Focused on building reliable, business-critical workflows, Kestra stands out with its strong open-source foundation. While many tools are overly complex or limited, Kestra provides a unified, scalable platform that is enterprise-ready and easy to use. The company is actively expanding, with a focus on hiring and growing in North America and EMEA.

About Alven
Alven is an early-stage venture capital firm with a unique instinct to align itself with high-potential category-defining companies and guide entrepreneurs from seed to growth. With over $2 billion under management, we operate from Paris and London and have backed over 170 teams across Europe & US in the last 2 decades, including many success stories such as Stripe, Algolia, Dataiku, Qonto, Datadog (Sqreen), Trainline (CaptainTrain), OpenClassrooms, Jobteaser, and Sézane.

About ISAI Venture
ISAI Venture invests €100,000 to €3 million in early-stage French Tech start-ups, from Pre-Seed to Post-Seed, as lead or co-lead. It also supports French entrepreneurs in the US, partnering with local investors. Notable successes include Blablacar, Cardiologs, Datadome, Evaneos, Malt, and 360Learning. ISAI Venture is part of ISAI Gestion, founded in 2009 by Tech entrepreneurs. It now has over 430 Entrepreneur-LPs and major institutional backers.

ISAI EXPANSION ANNOUNCES THE FIRST CLOSE OF ITS THIRD TECH BUYOUT FUND, SURPASSING 75% OF ITS FINAL TARGET SIZE

This is a successful start for ISAI Expansion III, a pioneer in Tech Buyout investment in France, as it exceeds expectations by raising nearly €190m in its initial closing, above its 1st closing target (€150m).

Having reached 75% of its final target size (€250m), the new fund exceeds the size of its predecessor ISAI Expansion II (€150m). ISAI Expansion III received strong support from Tech / Digital entrepreneurs, representing 40% of this fundraising. New entrepreneurs also join ISAI’s community of over 400 entrepreneurs-LPs from the Tech and Digital sector.

The Fund is also backed by renowned Institutional investors, including repeat investors such as Crédit Mutuel Arkéa, Eurazeo and Bpifrance[1]; and new investors such as the European Investment Fund, BNP Paribas Développement and a large US-based investment manager with $500bn+ of AUM.

Pierre Martini, Managing Partner of ISAI and head of the Expansion strategy, commented: “We are particularly pleased with this milestone, which rewards more than 10 years of market presence and leadership. ISAI continues to be a strong magnet for entrepreneurs in our sector; they are our DNA, and essential to ISAI's value proposition as a financial partner. “  

Caroline Gibert, Head of Investor Relations & ESG, added: “This 1st close also demonstrates ISAI's ability to meet the needs of institutional investors - including international partners - in terms of performance, transparency, reporting, ability to offer co-investment and ESG. Several of them are backing us for the first time. We would like to thank all our LPs, both existing and new, for their confidence. “  

A high value-added positioning combining Growth and Profitability in the Tech Buyout segment 

This fundraising is the result of establishing a unique positioning and track record since 2013. Created "by and for entrepreneurs", ISAI Expansion has become the partner of choice for Tech and Digital entrepreneurs looking to accelerate their profitable growth strategy and gain access to ISAI's expertise and unrivalled network within this ecosystem.

Over the past 10 years, ISAI Expansion has supported 19 companies and successfully exited nine of them (including six via secondary LBOs), such as aDvens, Labelium and more recently Pandat Finance and Invoke.

“With an entrepreneur-centric DNA, our strength lies in supporting entrepreneurs undertaking their first growth or LBO deal. With our core values of rigour and goodwill, we help them scale, structure their business to accelerate their development in France or abroad, and reach strategic value in their market. “ explained Jean-David Chamboredon, CEO and co-founder at ISAI.

“Profitable growth is at the core of our investment and value creation strategy. This implies limited financial leverage, which makes our portfolio companies more resilient across economic cycles. By way of illustration, the average annual growth of our portfolio companies has been close to 30% since our investment date.“ continued Nicolas Martineau, General Partner at ISAI Expansion.

ISAI Expansion III will be led by the same team and follows the same strategy as its predecessor, aiming to support 12 to 15 companies with investment of between €10m and €50m (plus possible co-investment by our LPs), taking minority or majority stakes in France, Spain, Switzerland and the Benelux. Two types of transactions will be pursued:

•  Growth Buyout transactions in companies with revenues of €10m or more; and,

• Growth investments in companies with annual growth rates in excess of 25-30% (Tech Growth).

“We are targeting resilient, proven Tech business models (such as SaaS, B2B services, marketplaces, etc.) with high gross margins, as well as "Tech-enabled" companies operating in traditional sectors, whose digital approach is delivering above-market growth and profitability. “, concluded Christophe Poupinel, General Partner at ISAI Expansion.

ISAI Expansion III, classified as Article 8 under the SFDR regulations, will continue its fundraising over 2024 to reach its target size of €250m.

About ISAI Expansion

For over 10 years, ISAI Expansion has been supporting Tech and Digital entrepreneurs who have chosen the path to profitability via Tech Buyout or Tech Growth operations. ISAI Expansion selects profitable, fast-growing companies with revenues of at least €10 million and invests, either as a majority or minority shareholder, alongside the founders and/or managers. ISAI Expansion has also supported numerous successful Tech successes, including Labelium, aDvens, Theodo, Invoke and Pandat Finance.

ISAI Expansion is a strategy of ISAI Gestion (« ISAI »), one of the pioneers in the French Tech ecosystem. Co-founded in 2009 " by and for " Tech entrepreneurs, ISAI gathers today more than 400 Entrepreneurs-LPs alongside major Institutional investors.

With offices in Paris and NYC, ISAI manages €815m across four investment strategies: Early-Stage Venture, Corporate Venture, Growth Lending and Tech Buyout. 

The company is a UNPRI signatory and a committed player in inclusive and low-carbon Tech.

About Bpifrance

Bpifrance Investissement is the management company that handles Bpifrance's equity investments. Bpifrance is the French national investment bank. It finances businesses – at every stage of their development – through loans, guarantees, equity investments and export insurances. Bpifrance also provides extra financial services (training, consultancy) to help entrepreneurs meet their challenges (innovation, export…).

For more information, please visit: www.bpifrance.fr and presse.bpifrance.fr - Follow us on Twitter: @Bpifrance - @BpifrancePresse

About the European Investment Fund

The EIF is part of the EIB Group. Its main goal is to support microenterprises and small businesses by helping them to access finance and venture capital. The EIF also actively supports climate fund investments with a strong focus on environmental sustainability. Its activities foster EU objectives promoting innovation, research and development, entrepreneurship, growth and job creation.

Website: www.eib.org/press; Press Office: +352 4379-21000 — press@eib.org

Contact: Christophe Alix, c.alix@eib.org tel.: +352 4379-84303; mobile: +33 6 11 81 30 99

About Eurazeo

Eurazeo is a leading European investment group with €33.5bn in diversified assets under management, including €23bn on behalf of institutional and private clients through its private equity, private debt, real estate and infrastructure strategies. The Group supports more than 600 mid-market companies, leveraging the commitment of its 400 employees, its sector expertise, its privileged access to global markets via 12 offices in Europe, Asia and the United States, and its responsible approach to value creation based on growth. The company's institutional and family shareholding structure, and its solid financial structure, ensure its long-term viability.

Eurazeo has offices in Paris, New York, London, Frankfurt, Berlin, Milan, Madrid, Luxembourg, Shanghai, Seoul, Singapore and Sao Paulo.

Eurazeo is listed on Euronext Paris.

ISIN: FR0-00121121 - Bloomberg-: RF FP - Reuters: EURA.PA.

About the Crédit Mutuel Arkéa group

The Crédit Mutuel Arkéa cooperative group comprises the Crédit Mutuel de Bretagne and Sud-Ouest federations and their member local banks, as well as some forty specialised subsidiaries (Fortuneo, Monext, Arkéa Banque Entreprises et Institutionnels, Arkéa Investment Services, Suravenir, etc.). By the end of 2022, it will have more than 11,000 employees, 2,600 directors, over 5.1 million members and customers, and total assets of €189.1 billion.

The first banking group to adopt a Mission Statement in 2019, Crédit Mutuel Arkéa became a company with a mission in 2022 and, through its "Transitions 2024" strategic plan, is committed to providing finance that serves local and regional authorities and their stakeholders, in order to position itself as an agile and innovative financial partner for the transitions of the future.

With a nationwide presence, Crédit Mutuel Arkéa has chosen to keep its decision-making centres in the regions. It is a major player in job creation in its regions and relies on an ongoing recruitment drive. The Group is convinced that local development can only be achieved by combining financial and non-financial considerations. This is why Crédit Mutuel Arkéa is the first French bank to have developed a unique method for calculating overall performance. This enables it to take into account all the financial, social, societal and environmental impacts of its activities and those of its stakeholders.

Contact : Solen Deltour - 06 30 80 38 78 - solen.deltour@arkea.com

About BNP Paribas Développement

BNP Paribas Développement is an independent subsidiary of BNP Paribas which has for more than 30 years taken minority stakes in successful SMEs to support their growth and secure their long-term development by facilitating their transmission. In addition to providing the financial resources that permit stability, BNP Paribas Développement's mission is to assist management teams in carrying out strategic medium-term projects. As a minority shareholder we provide our partners with appropriate governance without interference in day-to-day management. They also benefit from the strength of a leading banking group and the experience of a partner with more than 500 diversified investments.

Website: https://www.bnpparibasdeveloppement.com/

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bnp-paribas-développement

Contact: Céline Argy – celine.argy@bnpparibas.com – 06 64 46 60 46

Press contacts

ISAI |Caroline Gibert | caroline.gibert@isai.fr | M : +33 (0)6 99 91 06 60

Kablé Communication | Nolwenn Salaün | nolwenn.salaun@kable-communication.com |M : +33 (0)6 68 41 54 32

[1] Bpifrance invests via its balance sheet and its Growth fund of funds on behalf of private insurers and Caisse des Dépôts.

INICIO, THE STARTUP THAT'S ACCELERATING ENERGY TRANSITION, RAISES €1.5M

• Created in 2022, Inicio makes it easier for solar developers to find land suitable for their activity and respects the local environment thanks to a unique prospecting algorithm combining Big Data and Machine Learning.

• With its sights set on European leadership, the start-up is raising €1.5 million from ISAI, Kima Ventures, and Business Angels from entrepreneurship and energy. 

• This sum will enable the company to expand internationally and recruit 40 new staff over 18 months.

Speeding up the energy transition by digitalizing the process that is implemented to find the most suitable sites for solar power generation

In an ideal world, renewable energy producers would have easy, low-cost access to the land best suited to their activity but also to local economic issues and the needs of residents. In reality, however, access to land information is complex, making it impossible to take an overall view of solar development. To resolve this major obstacle to the energy transition, Inicio's founders, Thomas Moulia, Romain Batby, and Lucas Petigny, have developed a model for prospecting and making available land that reduces the risks associated with land acquisition and encourages partner developers to charge competitive prices.

The three engineers have developed an algorithm to identify the most suitable land for solar panels, acquire or lease it, assess the risks associated with the project, and make it available to solar power developers. The algorithm cross-references millions of geospatial data points from Open Data or produced by their Machine Learning models and prioritizes the most viable sites. Having identified more than 11,000 hectares of land, the Inicio team is helping to develop more than 400 MW of solar farms (ground-mounted photovoltaic, agrivoltaics) in various local contexts. The land managed by Inicio is also made available to local farmers looking for land to develop their farming activities, whether or not the solar farms are built. This is a model of agrivoltaics that enables land to be shared and synergies to be developed between its various uses.

For a sovereign and virtuous energy transition

At a time when the energy crisis has highlighted the need to accelerate the development of renewable energies, the European solar property market is growing steadily. It is expected to be worth between €5 and €10 billion by 2030. The Renewable Energies Acceleration Act has fueled this trend, passed on 10 March in response to the crisis in Ukraine and to make up for France's lag in diversifying its energy mix. Against this backdrop, the model developed by Inicio promotes the development of renewable, sovereign, and competitive electricity, which directly benefits the inhabitants of the countries where it is produced. To accelerate the pace of solar production across Europe, the start-up plans to expand into 4 new countries in 2023, including Italy and Poland.

A decisive step towards becoming Europe's leader in solar real estate

To support this European ambition, Inicio has raised €1.5 million from investment funds ISAI and Kima Ventures and Business Angels. This amount will enable Inicio to begin its international expansion, particularly in Italy and Poland, where its first customers are already present and where the local challenges are similar to those French developers face.

The funds raised will also enable the start-up to develop virtuous projects in conjunction with local stakeholders, and it is preparing to open an office in Toulouse to support its regional initiatives. The Inicio team currently consists of 10 people and is expected to grow to 50 by the end of 2024. Another objective is to develop the capabilities of its prospecting algorithm. Eventually, the results will be made available to government departments to encourage public support for renewable energy production projects.

"This round of financing is a decisive step in our development, but also a sign of confidence on the part of experienced players in the digital and energy transition sectors. It reinforces our ambition to become one of the leaders in securing solar land in Europe and to play our part in developing sustainable, sovereign electricity.

Thomas Moulia, Co-founder and CEO of Inicio

"We were convinced by the relevance of Inicio's virtuous model and the innovative vision of its co-founders. In its first year of existence, Inicio has proved its ability to meet solar developers' needs while helping preserve agricultural land. We are therefore delighted to participate in this financing round, enabling the company to roll out its offering even more quickly.

François Collet, Partner at ISAI

About Inicio :

Founded in 2022 by Thomas Moulia, Romain Batby, and Lucas Petigny, Inicio uses a unique prospecting algorithm to give solar developers easier access to land suited to their needs. It identifies, secures, and ensures the lease or sale of strategic land to develop sustainable, sovereign electricity.

About ISAI

Nearly 300 successful entrepreneurs, who have invested in ISAI funds, and more than 50 co-founders of start-ups supported by ISAI share the collective ambition of co-writing great entrepreneurial stories. ISAI invests in differentiated projects led by ambitious teams that it rigorously selects and actively supports. ISAI Gestion, an AMF-approved portfolio management company with more than €500m under management, aims to finance and support high-potential tech companies at the seed/post-prime stage (venture capital, €150k to €3m ticket with participation in successive rounds) or when they have already reached the break-even point (Tech Growth/LBO, €5m to €50m tickets).

Press contact

Jihane Teretal

jihane@jt-conseil.com

06 08 27 68 85

KESTRA RAISES $3M TO BUILD THE UNIVERSAL OPEN SOURCE ORCHESTRATION SOLUTION FOR ALL ENGINEERS

We are thrilled to announce that Kestra has raised $3 million of funding to build the leading universal open-source orchestrator. They aim to empower a wide range of users, from software developers to data engineers, by simplifying and unifying their automation and orchestration needs. The founders envision Kestra as the go-to solution for organizations seeking simple and powerful orchestration solutions for any kind of process and data automation usage.

Since its inception, Kestra has experienced significant traction as an open-source project, thriving with a vibrant community of users and contributors. Thousands of companies, from startups to large enterprises, including Huawei, Leroy Merlin, Acxiom, Tencent, Gorgias, Sophia Genetics, and Decathlon, are already orchestrating their mission-critical workloads with Kestra.

This funding was co-led by ISAI, Axeleo Capital, alongside several SaaS and Open source specialists angel investors, including founders and executives from Datadog (Olivier Pomel, Co-Founder and CEO), Collibra (Stan Christians, Co-founder & Chief Data Citizen), Strapi (Pierre Burgy, Co-Founder and CEO), BlaBlaCar (Olivier Bonnet, CTO).

Kestra’s innovative approach to orchestration aims to overcome the challenges posed by hyperspecialization in various domains — be it data orchestration, process and microservice orchestration, or infrastructure and business automation. Such hyperspecialization has often resulted in organizational silos, hindering collaboration and operational excellence.
To address this, Kestra offers a versatile and language-agnostic developer platform while simultaneously providing an intuitive user interface tailored to business professionals. This holistic solution aims to bridge the gap between different organizational units, thereby fostering a collaborative environment conducive to greater operational efficiency.

Their initial mission was to build the most efficient open-source workflow platform targeting the data engineering space. Since then, they’ve experienced tremendous growth well beyond that domain. Their users leverage Kestra not only to orchestrate data pipelines but also to power their mission-critical applications. They use the platform to orchestrate microservices and applications feeding data to their end products, and then they use Kestra for analytical workflows to understand how their products are performing. This way, Kestra serves as a universal orchestration solution for their business.

After talking to their customers and design partners, the'y’ve realized that software engineers have been largely neglected when it comes to orchestration. Most tools from that category are primarily built either for data engineers (tools like Airflow), DevOps (CI/CD and infrastructure management systems), or business users (drag-and-drop automation frameworks). Kestra is the first orchestrator that empowers engineers to build internal platforms powering their mission-critical operations and analytics. 

Software engineers appreciate the API-first design and robust, scalable, cloud-native architecture of our product. Event-driven capabilities are within Kestra’s DNA, enabling the creation, execution, and real-time monitoring of workflows at any scale. Kestra can efficiently process millions of events and ensures that businesses can reliably expand without sacrificing performance.

In terms of language compatibility, Kestra supports tasks written in a wide array of programming languages, including Python, R, Node.js, Julia, Rust, Bash, PowerShell, and anything that can run as a containerized process. Kestra's flows can run anywhere — from your laptop or on-prem VM to a Kubernetes cluster in a public cloud. Thanks to the extensible integrations ecosystem, including features such as custom plugins, triggers, tasks, blueprints, and fully customizable scripts and microservices, the product keeps evolving along with the business requirements of our users. 

In contrast to orchestrators that confine workflow creation to a single programming language, Kestra leverages a declarative YAML interface that democratizes orchestration and facilitates participation from developers utilizing diverse technology stacks. What our users appreciate most is that our product brings Infrastructure as Code best practices to all workflows — from those orchestrating mission-critical operations, business processes, and data pipelines to simple Zapier-style automations. Everything can be version-controlled and governed using software engineering best practices. Whether you make changes through the user interface, CI/CD, or via API calls, those changes are always automatically reflected in the codebase. This API-first approach fosters a synergistic workspace, allowing our users to build an internal platform loved by engineers and business stakeholders. 

Kestra strives to be the easiest-to-use orchestration tool on the market. Our users construct their first scheduled or event-driven workflow in a matter of minutes via our intuitive user interface or API, thereby obviating the need for complex deployment processes. We are steadfast in our belief that a simple orchestration API leads to greater reliability and extensibility than convoluted client-side frameworks.

The co-founders: Emmanuel Darras (CEO) &  Ludovic Dehon (CTO)

Web : https://kestra.io 

Video: https://youtu.be/h-P0eK2xN58?si=WhCCzXWZU93rwbTM

About Kestra Technologies

Kestra Technologies is the developer of Kestra, the open-source universal orchestrator that has garnered remarkable community success. Founded by Emmanuel Darras, the founder of Ankama, and Ludovic Dehon, a software tech lead and the creator of the opensource solution akHQ.io, Kestra Technologies is at the forefront of innovation with a strong commitment to open source.

Kestra is a powerful open-source orchestrator designed to simplify and automate intricate workflows effortlessly. Its universal approach empowers organizations to efficiently manage and coordinate tasks across diverse systems and platforms. Whether orchestrating data pipelines, cloud deployments, or IT operations, Kestra provides a flexible and scalable solution. With its robust features and user-friendly interface, Kestra is the preferred choice for businesses seeking operational agility and efficiency. Explore the future of orchestration with Kestra, where automation meets versatility.

For more information: www.kestra.io

About ISAI Venture

ISAI Venture invests from €100’000 to €3 million in early-stage companies, from pre-seed to Serie A, as lead or co-lead of the first financing rounds, in French Tech start-ups with very high potential. ISAI Venture is also active in the US market, alongside local investors, to support French entrepreneurs already established in the US. ISAI Venture has supported numerous successful start-ups, including Blablacar, Cardiologs, Datadome, Evaneos, Malt and 360Learning. 

 ISAI Venture is a strategy of ISAI Gestion (« ISAI »), one of the pioneers in the French Tech ecosystem. Co-founded in 2009 " by and for " Tech entrepreneurs, ISAI gathers today more than 300 Entrepreneurs-LPs alongside major Institutional Investors.
With offices in Paris and NYC, ISAI manages €630 million across four investment strategies: Early-Stage Venture, Corporate Venture, Growth Lending and Tech Buyout.  
The company is a UNPRI signatory and a committed player in inclusive and low-carbon Tech.
For more information: www.isai.fr

 
About Axeleo Capital (AXC) 

Axeleo Capital (AXC) is an emerging independent early-stage VC, trusted and backed by entrepreneurs across Europe. With €150 million in assets under management (AuM), 3 successful fund raises so far and 13 employees, the firm has made over 65 investments across the EU, and has achieved 17 successful exits within the past 24 months.

AXC provides a unique framework for European early stage startups. It offers a comprehensive range of support, including equity investments from seed to Series B stages, operational guidance and strategic assistance. The firm boasts an active ecosystem of more than 150 high-level partners, sector experts and mentors who have been instrumental in numerous success stories across Europe and the US. AXC focuses on 3 specific industry verticals where it has a deep knowledge: i) B2B Software (incl. cybersecurity, B2B FinTech, IA, data, SaaS) ii) PropTech & Construction Tech iii) GreenTech (incl. Chemicals and Materials, Energy, Agriculture & Food and Mobility)

For more information: www.axc.vc

ISAI GROWTH LENDING PROVIDES NEW FINANCING TO AB TASTY TO SUPPORT ITS GROWTH STRATEGY

ISAI Growth Lending, a new player offering non-dilutive growth financing to tech and tech-enabled companies in France and Europe, is supporting AB Tasty, a market leader in solutions for product optimisation and digital customer experience personalisation, with financing to support its organic and external growth.

Founded in 2009 by Alix de Sagazan and Rémi Aubert, AB Tasty offers A/B testing, website and mobile personalization, feature management, product research and recommendation solutions through its SaaS platform. Its plug-and-play platform, used by more than 1000 customers, helps marketing, product, and tech teams deliver a better digital user experience to their customers. AB Tasty has approximately 300 employees in 12 offices worldwide. The company is backed by institutional investors such as Crédit Mutuel Innovation, Korelya Capital, Omnes, Partech and XAnge.

The bespoke financing arranged by ISAI Growth Lending, in the form of a bond, is intended to finance the company’s international development, the expansion of its services and its external growth policy following the recent acquisitions of Epoq in Germany and Dotaki in France. In addition, the financing includes a margin ratchet mechanism based on the achievement of jointly defined environmental and social impact targets.

Rémi Aubert, co-founder of AB Tasty, comments: “The current momentum is very positive for us with a growing demand for our services in France and abroad in a favourable market environment with the sunset of the Google Optimize tool. The financing solution offered by ISAI meets our current needs and our ambitious development plan while also giving us the opportunity to bring on board a long-term strategic partner with strong digital expertise.”

Pierre Cousin and Sébastien Ritter, General Partners at ISAI add: “We have been impressed by the quality of the teams’ execution, the sustainable enrichment of the product offering and the relevant external growth strategy, which has led to numerous new commercial successes and a continuous improvement in customer satisfaction and loyalty. We are delighted to be partnering with AB Tasty’s management team through a bespoke financing that will enable them to capitalise on multiple current development opportunities.”

Participants:
AB Tasty: Rémi Aubert, Alix de Sagazan, Olivier Candau
ISAI: Pierre Cousin, Sébastien Ritter

ISAI Advisors:
Legal, Tax, Social: Mermoz (Tristan Segonds, Martin Kyuchukov, Eleanore Griffiths, Roxane Descarpentries)

AB Tasty Advisors:
Corporate: Julien-Jeulin & Partners (Laurent Maudoux)

TEALE RAISES €10M TO BECOME THE EUROPEAN LEADER IN MENTAL HEALTH AND PUT AN END TO BURN-OUT IN THE WORKPLACE

• A Series A funding of €10m for teale from Alter Equity (Fanny Picard), Bpifrance's Digital Venture fund (Véronique Jacq), followed by ISAI and Evolem, the company's longstanding funds.

• This funding round is an important signal in Europe, where funding for the mental health sector lags far behind that in Anglo-Saxon countries and the 7 unicorns in the United States.

• Mental health problems cost companies an average of €3,000 per employee per year in France.

• Teale was created to help companies rise to this challenge, because a team that puts the well-being of its employees first is also a healthier company.

• Two years after its launch, teale is recruiting and aims to conquer Europe.

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Teale responds to the major challenge of mental health in the workplace

In March 2023, 44%* of employees said they were experiencing psychological distress and 28%* were suffering from burn-out. Today, mental health costs companies an average of €3,000** per year per employee, due to presenteeism, staff turnover and absenteeism.

Mental health has also become a major expectation of employees: 91% of them believe that the corporate culture should support their mental health, and 68% of millennials (aged 30-45) have left their jobs for reasons linked to their mental health.

Founded in 2021 by Julia Néel Biz, Geoffroy Verzat, Nicolas Merlaud and Gilles Rasigade, teale is the first mental health platform dedicated to employees. Its mission is to democratise this subject so that taking care of one's mental health is accessible to everyone, in a no-holds-barred, preventive and personalised way, and to build healthy organisations in the process.

Teale uses technology and cognitive and behavioural sciences to help people and organisations :

• engage and support employees through personalised, one-to-one coaching,

• transform corporate culture and prevent risks through collective support.

Fundraising to create a European leader

Following an initial fundraising round of €2m in May 2021, teale has completed this 2nd round of financing with Alter Equity, the pioneering impact fund headed by Fanny Picard, and Bpifrance via its Digital Venture fund headed by Véronique Jacq, followed by ISAI and Evolem, teale's historic funds.

More than 100 customers have chosen to offer teale's services to their teams, representing more than 500,000 employees. The start-up has brought together around a hundred qualified and experienced psychologists and psychiatrists.

Thanks to this new funding and its model based on technology that can be replicated abroad, teale will be able to develop its solution and go beyond national borders. Its aim is to create a real leader in this field and help employees and managers in European companies to achieve greater well-being. In particular, the company aims to expand its teams from 20 to 80 employees by 2024.

Technology and scientific expertise at the service of people

Teale has developed a global solution for businesses and was the first French company to launch a technological application. From the outset, it has encrypted all its data to ensure total confidentiality between the employer, the employee and itself.

Thanks to data and its algorithms, the company can identify weak signals upstream on a dashboard, and put in place relevant preventive actions with the intervention of teale partner psychologists (conferences, workshops, round tables, training courses, etc.).

Its 60 digital programmes and more than 1,000 pieces of content (videos, audio, etc.) cover all areas (professional and personal), including stress management, sleep, carers, relationship problems in the workplace, bereavement, infertility and, of course, preventing burn-out. These programmes are built around a network of over 100 experts, who are also available for one-to-one sessions.

In just two years, teale has created the world's largest self-therapy library and the largest database in the field of mental health, all by measuring the needs of employees and the impact of what teale offers them (anonymised questionnaires).

Results measured by a very positive ROI

Teale is making a significant contribution to the prevention of Psycho-Social Risks by helping to democratise knowledge and access to good mental health. The fact that the service is free for users removes one of the barriers to therapy.

Companies must be the driving force behind this change, especially as the results are measurable in terms of team effectiveness and company profitability: the ROI**** measured for mental health solutions implemented by companies is 5 times the investment made.

Studies show that the teale approach, combining 3 factors, can even increase to 11 times the initial investment when 3 key factors are combined: prevention, data to personalise the approach, and company-wide communication. These 3 factors are the pillars of teale's offering.

For teale, the best ROI is measured by the willingness of employees to use the platform, to find tools and solutions to the situations they face: 45% employee engagement on average. Three quarters of employee users say that thanks to teale they have made their first appointment with a psychologist and 90% of them say that thanks to teale they feel better in their head and in their work.

* étude OpinionWay (2023)

** Institut Sapiens, Deloitte (Mental health and employers, The case for investment, Malakoff Humanis (Baromètre 2021), McKinsey Health Institute (Addr

essing employee burnout: Are you solving the right problem?)

*** Rapport McKinsey (may 2022)

**** rapport Deloitte Mental health and employers (jan. 2020)

About teale

Teale was created in 2021, after a year of research and development, by Julia Néel Biz, Geoffroy Verzat, Nicolas Merlaud and Gilles Rasigade, with the aim of democratising mental health and making it the first holistic mental health platform dedicated to employees. Mental health costs companies €3,000 per employee per year. Teale puts technology and cognitive and behavioural sciences at the service of people and organisations in order to :

• engage and support employees through individual coaching

• transform culture and prevent risks through collective support

Two and a half years after its creation, teale represents a team of 25 and soon 80 employees, supported by around a hundred professionals. They serve more than 100 customers, mainly major accounts: These include Sanofi, Sncf, Carrefour, Bearing Point, EY, Cartier and BETC.

Teale has raised €2m in 2021 from ISAI, Kima Venture, Evolem and renowned BAs such as the founders of eFounders Teads, Chauffeur Privé, Meero, etc.

Press contact teale :

Estelle Monraisse, Alter'Com Conseil
06 60 41 81 52 - estelle@altercom-conseil.fr

À propos de Bpifrance et du fonds Digital Venture 

Les investissements en fonds propres de Bpifrance sont opérés par Bpifrance Investissement. Bpifrance finance les entreprises - à chaque étape de leur développement – en crédit, en garantie et en fonds propres. Bpifrance les accompagne dans leurs projets d’innovation et à l’international. Bpifrance assure aussi, désormais leur activité export à travers une large gamme de produits. Conseil, université, mise en réseau et programme d’accélération à destination des startups, des PME et des ETI font également partie de l’offre proposée aux entrepreneurs.
Bpifrance Digital Venture est l’équipe en charge des investissements Venture dans les sociétés technologiques innovantes du secteur numérique. Elle accompagne aux stades de l’amorçage, et des Séries A et B, des sociétés technologiques ayant l’ambition de devenir des leaders internationaux sur leur marché. Avec 700M€ sous gestion, Bpifrance Digital Venture a investi dans plus de 110 entreprises et réalisé plus de 25 cessions depuis 2011. L’équipe a investi, entre autres, dans Talentsoft (Cegid), Netatmo (Legrand), Meilleurs Agents (Axel Springer), Cardiologs Technologies (Phillips), Manomano, Openclassrooms, Shippeo, Strapi, GitGuardian, Livestorm, Swan, Exotrail ou encore Alice&Bob.

Plus d’information sur : www.bpifrance.fr  - https://presse.bpifrance.fr/
Suivez-nous sur Twitter : @Bpifrance - @BpifrancePresse

Contact presse :

Juliette Fontanillas - Bpifrance
06 72 76 08 09 - juliette.fontanillas@bpifrance.fr 

A propos d’Alter Equity 

Société de gestion indépendante, Alter Equity est née de la volonté de financer les transitions environnementales et sociales dont notre société a besoin vers une économie plus durable, plus généreuse, plus humaine et globalement plus responsable. Elle a été la première en France à soutenir l’intérêt général dans sa double dimension sociale et environnementale tout en recherchant un rendement financier rémunérant le risque pris par ses souscripteurs et le concept d’investissement à impact positif. Elle déploie actuellement son deuxième fonds de 110m€ en investissant des montants de 3 à 10 m€ au capital de startups européennes dont l’activité est utile aux personnes ou à l’environnement. Elle a également été la première société de gestion de fonds dans le non-côté posant comme condition à son investissement l’engagement dans une démarche RSE rigoureuse, requérant notamment de procéder à un bilan carbone et d’ouvrir le capital à l’ensemble des salariés.

Contact presse : 

Fatine Diouri - La Nouvelle Agence pour Alter Equity
07 67 79 97 28 - fatine@lanouvelle-agence.com

MEDIUS ANNOUNCES INTENT TO ACQUIRE EXPENSYA

Stockholm, Paris, Tunis: June 7, 2023 – Medius, a leading provider of accounts payable (AP) automation, today announced its intent to acquire expense management software company Expensya for an undisclosed sum.

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Founded in 2014 by former Microsoft software engineers Karim Jouini and Jihed Othmani, Expensya’s web, mobile and smart payment-card solutions automate spend management for more than 6,000 customers with 700,000 active users in more than 100 countries.

Expensya helps companies to empower their employees to spend autonomously, reduce cost, save time and optimize financial control in the Office of the CFO. Its software integrates with leading ERP applications including SAP, Oracle and Microsoft Dynamics.

Medius’s software platform uses artificial intelligence to link and automate invoice capture, processing and payments for mid-market and enterprise AP teams helping them to automatically identify potential fraud or duplicate payments using anomaly detection technology to proactively spot risks. The acquisition of Expensya and its powerful AI-enabled, mobile-first, employee spend management capabilities will complement Medius’s strengths in areas such as autonomous AP, payments, procurement, sourcing, contracts and supplier onboarding. Medius and Expensya have complementary geographic and product strengths that accelerate the ability to grow and cross-sell in the highly competitive business applications market. Expensya has developed a leading employee spend management solution in France and this move enables Medius to capitalize on the French e-invoicing mandate.

“Expensya has developed a leading employee spend management solution in Europe, with innovative features and AI-powered innovation. Its founders, Karim and Jihed, and its leadership team share our ambition to transform the spend management category using the power of automation and AI. Together, we can offer CFOs solutions that can help them transform finance while empowering their teams. We are delighted to welcome the whole team to the Medius family.” comments Jim Lucier, CEO of Medius

This acquisition, one of the largest in the MENA region, comes after a period of impressive revenue growth for Expensya. In the past two years the company more than doubled its recurring revenue and grew its headcount to more than 200 employees mainly based in Tunisia, France, and Germany. The company raised $20M in a Series B funding round in May 2021.

“Mid-size organizations and their CFOs are clearly looking for one common platform to efficiently manage all their spend. By combining our employee spend management solution and payment cards, with Medius’s AP automation platform, we now cover the whole indirect spend of companies and can apply the power of AI to help finance teams to optimize cost and processes across the board. We look forward to writing the next chapter of our story with Jim and the rest of the Medius team.” said Karim Jouini, CEO of Expensya

“Medius’s planned acquisition of Expensya will help financial leaders get a holistic view of their organization’s travel performance and financial position by enabling data from travel and expense activities to flow between the relevant finance functions. Businesses looking to thrive in the post-pandemic period will need advanced software tools like these to cope with new aspects of business travel.” said Kevin Permenter, research director for Financial Applications at IDC.

Press contacts: (to be updated according to country)

Dan Bird                                                        
Fight or Flight for Medius                             
medius@fightorflight.com                           
EMEA: +44 330 133 0985                                
USA: +1 646-693-0221 

For France
Franck Tupinier 
Myntic PR for Expensya
ftupinier@myntic-pr.com
+33 6 74 68 37 93  

For DACH
Silvia Amelia Bianchi
AB Communications for Expensya
sbianchi@sabcommunications.net
Mob CH: +41 (0) 76.329.38.86
Tel  DE: +49 (0)30 5600.7954

For Spain
Pablo Gutiérrez
Evercom for Expensya
pablo.gutierrez@evercom.es
+34 91 577 92 72
+34 93 415 37 05 | (Ext. 1050)

About Medius

Medius links invoice capture, processing and payment to replace the worry and wondering of managing AP with calm and confidence. Medius goes far beyond basic automation by using artificial intelligence to do most of the work – so invoices get confirmed, coded and paid; AP teams get to go home and rest easy; and businesses can trust their budgets and forecasts. Medius has more than 4,000 customers across 102 countries and processes $180 billion in annual spend through its system. Visit medius.com to learn more.

About Expensya

Expensya eliminates the administrative hassle of processing employee initiated spend. It facilitates companies in empowering their employees to spend independently while maintaining budgetary control. Its innovative solution generates benefits for employees, finance teams, and managers alike, enabling companies to transition from retroactively tracking expenses to pre-approving budgets.

Expensya uses artificial intelligence to eliminate manual data entry and automate the processing of expenses. Expensya is an easy-to-adopt and easy-to-adapt employee spend management solution that offers full control over spending while improving the bottom line of its customers. With a workforce of 200 individuals representing 20 different nationalities spread across 4 countries, Expensya  has more than 6,000 client companies and over 700,000 users across 100 countries.

AXEPTIO, A LEADER IN RESPECTFUL INTERNET USER CONSENT MANAGEMENT, HAS SECURED A 3.5 MILLION EURO INVESTMENT FROM ISAI, EVOLEM AND OVNI CAPITAL

Paris, May 3, 2023 - Since 2017, Axeptio has been developing a consent management platform aimed at rebuilding trust between internet users and brands. The platform has already been adopted by over 50,000 websites. As part of its international expansion, the Montpellier-based start-up has announced that it has raised 3.5 million euros from investment funds ISAI, Evolem, and Ovni Capital.

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Making consent management a crucial part of the user experience

Internet users are now constantly faced with numerous consent requests while browsing the internet, such as accepting cookies, general terms and conditions of sale, or subscribing to newsletters. This constant solicitation creates "consent fatigue" among internet users and negatively affects the conversion rates of e-commerce sites and the performance of calls-to-action. Against this trend, Axeptio has established itself with a platform that, unlike its counterparts, aims to provide the conditions for truly informed consent while preserving website performance.

Consent management becomes more playful for internet users and simpler for brands. Axeptio's self-service tools come with an intuitive interface and are easy to install and configure. Developers can quickly set up procedures for storing evidencethat complies with regulations, as well as A/B testing methods to evaluate the effectiveness of each parameter.

"Transparency and image are essential to building a strong and lasting relationship with an audience. Consent is not just an obligation. It is an excellent opportunity to empower the user and encourage them to trust." commented Romain Bessuges-Meusy, CEO, and co-founder of Axeptio.

Fundraising to scale up and successfully expand internationally

The consent management market only emerged in 2018 with the application of the European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), which regulates the processing of personal data by digital players. Since then, more than fifty players have appeared on the market for consent management platforms, and some, like Axeptio, aim to establish themselves as international leaders. Among the publishers of the 50,000 websites on which its tool is deployed, the start-up already has 10% of its clientele spread internationally across 40 countries.

To accelerate its international development and conquer new markets, Axeptio has led this 3.5 million euro funding round. The amount will allow the Axeptio team to welcome new senior profiles and increase their workforce from 42 employees to around 60.

"After equipping tens of thousands of websites for startups, SMEs, and large companies throughout France, our ambition is now international. This fundraising venture will allow us to conquer the billions of websites that still need to be equipped!" concluded Romain Bessuges-Meusy, CEO, and co-founder of Axeptio.

About Axeptio
Founded in 2017 in Montpellier, Axeptio is the publisher of the friendliest and most respectful consent collection solution for improved user experience. Its mission: to create a bond of trust that will reconcile internet users and brands. More information is available on Axeptio.eu.

Press Contact
Jihane Teretal jihane@jt-conseil.com +33 6 08 27 68 85

BOUYGUES & ISAI LAUNCH INVESTMENT FUND DEDICATED TO CONSTRUCTION START-UPS

Bouygues and ISAI announce the creation of the ISAI Build Venture investment fund. Its purpose is to invest in start-ups that develop software and hardware solutions capable of speeding up the transformation and decarbonization of Bouygues' business segments in the fields of construction, property development as well as in transport, and energy and services infrastructure.

The fund will use its €80 million of capital to acquire minority interests during funding rounds ranging from seed to series C. ISAI Build Venture aims to allocate between €500,000 to €5 million for each investment.

The fund’s management will be entrusted to ISAI, which has been financing and supporting digital start-ups and scale-ups in France and abroad for over 13 years.

This initiative will help the Bouygues group identify and invest in champions in the construction sector, with the aim of:

• driving the transformation of its business segments through better understanding and integration of new technologies and new business models;

• encouraging the emergence and adoption of the best solutions to address the key challenges of digitalisation and mass production, whilst reducing the environmental impact of its activities.

The combined expertise of ISAI, a recognized investor in the tech/digital ecosystem, and of Bouygues, a leader in its business activities, will help the fund to build a portfolio of 15 to 20 start-ups over the next five years from around the world with the main focus being on Europe and the United States.

Edward Bouygues, Deputy CEO of the Bouygues group, in charge of Innovation, said: "We’re delighted to announce the creation of this investment fund, which bolsters our innovation program. This ambitious initiative will enable the Group to progress on the key issues that our sectors face. The digitalization of our processes, the improvement of productivity, the management and reduction of the carbon impact of our activities are at the heart of our concerns and we firmly believe that the start-up ecosystem can nurture the emergence of fit-for-purpose, efficient, and ground-breaking solutions. We are counting on ISAI's expertise to identify projects with very high potential, and we want to make the Group's know-how available to these entrepreneurs in order to support their growth.”

"The construction sector has begun its digital and environmental transition. This opens up vast market opportunities for new start-up/scale-up players. ISAI is keen to provide its expertise in identifying trends and investment opportunities to this partnership with the Bouygues group, while carrying out its role as an investor to the full and providing firm support to entrepreneurs and our co-investors,” said Jean-David Chamboredon, Chief Executive Officer, ISAI.

About Bouygues

Bouygues is a diversified services group operating in over 80 countries with 196,000 employees all working to make life better every day. Its business activities in construction (Bouygues Construction,Bouygues Immobilier, Colas), energies & services (Equans), media (TF1) and telecoms (Bouygues Telecom) are able to drive growth since they all satisfy constantly changing and essential needs.

About ISAI Gestion

ISAI Gestion (“ISAI”) is a pioneer in French Tech & Digital private investments co-founded in 2009 by successful Tech entrepreneurs – including Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet, Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, Stéphane Treppoz – and backed by 300+ Entrepreneurs’ LP and major institutional investors. ISAI currently manages €600m of assets through four pillars of investment expertise: Early-Stage Venture Capital,  Corporate Venture, Tech Buyout and Growth Lending. 
ISAI is a signatory of the UNPRI and actively committed in making the Tech more Inclusive and Carbon efficient.

Bouygues press contact
presse@bouygues.com • Tel.: +33 (0)1 44 20 12 01
BOUYGUES SA • 32 avenue Hoche • 75378 Paris CEDEX 08 • bouygues.com  

ISAI press contact
Kablé Communication: Nolwenn Salaün | nolwenn.salaun@kable-communication.com |M: +33 (0)6 68 41 54 32

PRICEMOOV RAISES $10 MILLION IN SERIES A LED BY ISAI AND BPIFRANCE DIGITAL VENTURE TO ACCELERATE GLOBAL GROWTH

Paris, April 12, 2023 - Pricemoov, the cloud company that powers intelligent pricing decisions, today announced it has raised $10 Million in its Series A funding round led by ISAI and Bpifrance Digital Venture. Pricemoov will use the financing to grow its team, significantly invest in product development, and expand its presence internationally. 

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The challenges surrounding pricing are constantly increasing as businesses navigate inflation, supply chain disruptions, and cost volatility. This is further complicated by the omnichannel imperative, competitive pressures, and rapidly changing customer expectations. Pricemoov absorbs all this complexity in order to help companies make better pricing decisions and remain profitable.

To continue its growth and become the platform of choice for modern pricing, Pricemoov will open a number of new positions and strengthen its international presence to support customers with a global footprint. This fundraising will also enable Pricemoov to invest in its technology and product innovation. 

“We believe Pricemoov has an opportunity to bring intelligent pricing to businesses at any stage of their pricing maturity with an easy-to-use, intuitive platform. We are excited to partner with Pricemoov to support its continued efforts to democratize pricing” commented Adrien Neel, Investment Director at Bpifrance Digital Venture

This funding round comes as Pricemoov closes out an impressive fiscal year of aggressive growth. The company saw a 150% annual increase in revenue and grew its customer base by 200%, including new customers Jokr, Recommerce, Samkaup, and Audi on demand. This commercial expansion was accompanied by Pricemoov doubling its team and geographical growth in both Europe and the USA.

“We are impressed with Pricemoov’s pricing expertise and platform capabilities and believe that the company is well positioned to accelerate its growth in this promising market. We look forward to working closely with Pricemoov’s leadership team to keep pushing the boundaries of pricing” said Francois Collet, Partner at ISAI

"We are thrilled by the support of investors like ISAI and Bpifrance Digital Venture as we embark on the next chapter of our growth. This round of funding will allow us to invest in our growth, expand our platform, and enhance our offering, furthering our mission to help companies across all industries make better pricing decisions with greater confidence and speed" said Pierre Hebrard, CEO and Co-Founder of Pricemoov

About Pricemoov

Pricemoov is a global provider of next-generation price management and optimization solutions that help companies power digital commerce, adapt to market dynamics, and empower sales teams. Featuring powerful data science, end-to-end automation, and an intuitive user experience, the cloud-native Pricemoov platform enables B2B and B2C businesses to unlock their revenue potential with intelligent pricing.

About ISAI

Nearly 300 successful entrepreneurs, who have invested in ISAI funds, and more than 50 ISAI-backed start-up co-founders share the collective ambition of co-writing great entrepreneurial stories. ISAI invests in differentiated projects run by ambitious teams that it selects rigorously and actively supports. ISAI Gestion, an investment management company approved by the AMF, with over €500 million under management, aims to finance and support high potential Tech companies, at the seed/post-seed stage (venture capital, ticket from € 150k ticket to € 3m with participations in successive rounds) or when they have already reached the break-even stage (Tech Growth/LBO, tickets from €5m to €50m).

About Bpifrance Digital Venture 

Bpifrance Digital Venture finances companies at every stage of their development with credit, guarantees and equity. Bpifrance supports them in their innovation and international projects and insures their export activity with a wide range of products. Consulting, training, networking and an acceleration programme for start-ups, SMEs and mid-sized companies are some of the other services it offers to entrepreneurs. Thanks to Bpifrance and its 50 regional offices, entrepreneurs have a single local contact to help them through the challenges they face.

Media Contact

contact@pricemoov.com

DATADOME CLOSES $42 MILLION IN SERIES C FUNDING TO ADVANCE THE FIGHT AGAINST BOT-DRIVEN CYBERATTACKS AND FRAUD

Paris, March 30, 2023 - DataDome, a leading provider of AI-powered online fraud and bot management, today announced its Series C funding round of $42 million. This round was led by InfraVia Growth, with participation from existing investors Elephant, ISAI, and others, to support DataDome on its mission to rid the web of bot-driven cyberattacks and fraud.

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Malicious bots are growing more advanced by the second to circumvent security measures, and the rise of human-bot combinations and AI-powered bots have facilitated the consistent bypass of usual point-in-time, static barriers like WAFs, traditional CAPTCHAs, and user validation databases. What’s more, silos between security and fraud mitigation enable attackers to take advantage of vulnerabilities and launch attacks that cut across the whole customer journey, profiting along the way. Online businesses are bearing the consequences of automated cyberattacks and online fraud, and it’s a costly situation to be stuck in. Enterprises need a solution that puts them back in the driver’s seat and empowers them to fight fraud.

DataDome’s bot and online fraud solution assesses the intent of a visit in real time, every time, to detect and mitigate attacks on mobile apps, websites, and APIs with unparalleled accuracy and zero compromise. Such performance is made possible by the solution’s ability to adapt machine learning algorithms in real time, at the edge. DataDome protects 300+ enterprises from account takeover, scraping, payment fraud, DDoS, credential stuffing, and more.

“Bots have become a common path to fraud. In 2022 alone, DataDome stopped, in real time, over 250 billion online fraud attempts. Because of how our product is built and deployed, we have a unique lens into attack vectors and can see across silos to stop attacks in their tracks. This is why enterprises like Rakuten, Reddit, and AngelList trust us to protect their digital properties. This cash infusion will fund global commercial rollout and R&D efforts to ensure that our offering continues to raise the bar, and stays well ahead of bot developers and fraudsters. In InfraVia, we have an investor who trusts in and shares our vision, and brings years of valuable experience helping companies scale globally. Threat actors don’t stand a chance.” said Benjamin Fabre, CEO and co-founder of DataDome.

“We were genuinely impressed by the sophistication of DataDome’s solution, as well as the company’s growth trajectory, especially in the US. DataDome perfectly embodies our commitment to growth technology companies, and we fully endorse the team’s vision of bot management as a foundation for fighting online fraud. We are very much looking forward to the next phase of DataDome’s evolution and global scale.” said Guillaume Santamaria, Partner at InfraVia.

SPLIO ACQUIRES TINYCLUES AND BECOMES THE FIRST INTELLIGENT CRM PLATFORM POWERED BY DEEP LEARNING (IA)

Paris, March 14, 2023 - Splio, a CRM specialist and publisher of the Individualization® Marketing SaaS platform, is very proud to announce the acquisition of Tinyclues, the SaaS predictive marketing specialist, based on Deep Learning.

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This acquisition makes concrete the common ambition to enable brands to orchestrate simple and large-scale hyper-personalized marketing.

Splio equips more than 400 brands including Decathlon, Mr Bricolage, Cojean, Micromania, Smallable, Sud Express, Brioche Dorée and Orange, and has been developing its Individualization® Marketing solution since 2021. This solution, based on Machine Learning (AI), responds to the twofold challenge of today's CRM: personalizing the customer experience for each individual while offering marketers a simple solution for orchestration and large-scale management.

The technological power of Tinyclues' platform increases Splio's value proposition tenfold. Recently awarded at the Sammy Awards, Tinyclues is the most powerful predictive engine on the market, as it is the only one based on Deep Learning. It enables the automated processing of very large volumes of First-Party data to accurately predict customer behavior. More than a hundred brands use Tinyclues on a daily basis, including Veepee, Fnac, Accor, Samsung, Cyrillus, Chantelle, Tiffany & Co and SNCF Connect.

The acquisition of Tinyclues allows Splio to become the European leader in intelligent CRM, thanks to its Individualized Marketing® offer, which can be quickly and easily deployed in all industries and for companies of all sizes.

"AI has become the new standard for getting to know customers better or personalizing marketing communications on a large scale, regardless of industry or business size. Machine Learning-based Individuation® Marketing was a first response to these challenges. Tinyclues' platform, with the addition of Deep Learning, strengthens our leadership and offers us new growth opportunities, both sectorally and geographically," says Mireille Messine, CEO of Splio

"Splio and Tinyclues have long shared the same vision of CRM and the same ambition of "one to one at scale" for customers. Joining Splio allows our Deep Learning platform to express its full potential by enabling brands to do predictive marketing all the way to customer orchestration and activation." David Bessis, CEO of Tinyclues

Following this acquisition, Splio now has 250 employees in Europe and MEA and a portfolio of 500 corporate customers ranging from mid-sized companies to large groups from various industries (Retail, catering, telecoms, travel, hotels, leisure...), for an ARR of over €30m.

About Splio

Splio is a Martech company based in Paris. The company has 200 employees, including 90 in Product and R&D, and 5 offices in Europe and MEA. Splio publishes a SaaS Individualization® Marketing platform for B2C customer marketing professionals. Among a portfolio of more than 400 brands, ranging from mid-sized companies to large groups in four key industries (retail, e-commerce, restaurants, telecoms), we can mention Decathlon, Rue du Commerce, Mr Bricolage, Cojean, Micromania, Smallable, Brioche Dorée, Le Slip Français or Orange.

Splio evolves Marketing Automation into Individuation® Marketing to allow companies to activate and engage each of their customers on a case-by-case basis in a unique relationship thanks to AI. The Individuation® Marketing platform is based on an innovation without equivalent on the market, the arbitrage, in charge of transmitting every day in a 100% automated way the most relevant communication towards the most appropriate channel for each customer. The unique differentiator of this arbitration is to calculate the optimum from the company's stakes, their objectives and constraints, and the appetites of each of its customers.

Mireille Messine is Splio's CEO and Grégory Chapron the Co-CEO. The company counts among its investors Sofiouest, Ring Capital, BPI-FAN, Omnes, Seventure, Amundi PEF, BNP Paribas Développement and SWEN.

About Tinyclues

Tinyclues is a MarTech company that publishes a predictive marketing solution based on Deep Learning. The solution has been acclaimed by its users and is currently used by more than a hundred brands, including Veepee, Fnac, Accor, Samsung, Tiffany & Co and the SNCF.

Tinyclues' cutting-edge AI accurately analyzes First-Party data so that CRM teams can predict their customers' purchase intent and launch campaigns in minutes.

Tinyclues received the 2021 Sammy Award for "Product of the Year" and the Martech Breakthrough Award for "Best Enterprise CRM Solution" in 2021 and 2022. Tinyclues is listed as a "Vendor to Watch" in Gartner's Magic Quadrant for Digital Marketing Analytics and a "Cool Vendor" in the Multichannel Marketing Report. In addition, G2 has awarded Tinyclues "Users Love Us" and "High-Performer" certifications in 2021 and 2022.

Tinyclues' investors include ISAI, Elaia, Alven Capital and EQT Ventures.

Contacts

Splio : Sandra Fernandes | CMO | sfernandes@splio.com | M: +33 (0)6 46 46 43 16

Agence Nouvelles Graines : Clémence Rebours l c.rebours@nouvelles-graines.com l M: +33 (0)6 60 57 76 43

LOOKING BACK ON 10 YEARS OF FRENCH TECH BUYOUT

Back in 2005, when the French Buyout (or LBO[1]) market itself was already pretty mature, several members of the ISAI team invested in one of the very first Tech Buyout deals in France: seloger.com.
7 years later, although the segment was only in its early stages, we announced the launch of our Tech Buyout investment activity under the name “ISAI Expansion” and completed, on February 14th, 2013, our very first transaction with Hospimedia. The value proposition was simple: to provide Tech entrepreneurs who have chosen to move forward as a profitable business with financing and liquidity solutions that were, until then, inaccessible on the French market.

Tech Buyout vs "traditional" Buyout: lower financial leverage, and more operational growth!

One of the key differentiators for Tech Buyouts vs Buyouts in traditional sectors lies in the key role that Growth plays in a Tech company’s valuation. Given the youth of the sector and its continuous need for innovation, Tech companies eligible for LBOs have often generated significantly higher growth rates than companies operating in traditional sectors. To illustrate this, the average annual organic growth rate of ISAI Expansion’s portfolio companies is higher than 25%[2]! When we analyse the value created in many of our exited portfolio companies, we see that the performance achieved is largely driven by this Growth effect. And, despite the recent setbacks of listed Tech stock markets, which have put an even stronger emphasis on the importance of profitability, a recent study showed that, in the software sub-segment, Growth is still valued twice as much as profitability in the famous “rule of 40”. This particular focus on Growth partially explains the specificity of Tech Buyouts. The entire financial operation must enable this Growth, and never constrain it. This implies paying a particular attention to the financial leverage, which must remain reasonable; arbitrating for an “in fine” rather than amortized leverage; or remaining cautious on bank covenants.

How has the French Tech Buyout segment evolved over the past few years?

Over the past ten years, we have studied more than 75% of the Tech Buyout transactions in France (on the small, lower-mid cap segment), and we will continue to deploy ISAI Expansion funds with the rigor that we have always cultivated. This segment has undergone spectacular developments in recent years.

According to Lincoln International, the number of Buyout transactions in Software (a Tech sub-segment) has, for instance, increased by +130% between 2015 and 2022 globally, with many new players among both
Generalist and Tech Buyout funds. This evolution was especially driven by:

• An almost uninterrupted increase in multiples between 2009 and 2021;

• Attractive economic fundamentals such as growth, low capital intensity, limited working capital requirements, etc.;

• The acceleration of the digitalization of companies and individuals during the Covid crisis; and,

• As a result, a proven outperformance compared to traditional Buyouts. According to Bain & Company[3], Software Buyouts generated, on average, a multiple of 2.8x between 2010 and 2018, vs. 2.2x for LBOs in other industries!

This development is excellent news, and we are glad because this is an essential building milestone for the Tech ecosystem in France.

But for how long will the industry still be able to take advantage of this easily accessible “eldorado”?

With the surge of acquisition multiples, especially in 2020 and 2021, we can only wonder whether these transactions concluded at very high prices over this period, especially in the software sector, will generate similar performances to the ones we have observed in the past.

Three considerations fuel our thoughts:

• First, the decrease of Software Buyout valuations remains limited (around -20% versus their peak level) compared to their listed equivalents (-50%), but it is clear that this gap will probably be filled in the short or medium run.

• Second, the emergence of new "mega-trends" will force Tech companies, and software in particular, to invest and renew themselves more than they do today, with:

  • Increased challenges around cybersecurity, hosting, Green IT, data protection,

  • A transition towards SaaS business models,

  • Increased pressure on gross margins in a highly inflationary environment,

  • Lower barriers to entry with the development of no-code / low-code, generative IA, etc.

• Finally, the Tech sector suffers from structural weaknesses which have been ignored for too long: little/no diversity, a barely nascent environmental awareness, a certain lack of proximity with regions, etc. Much remains to be done and it is up to the entire ecosystem to tackle these issues head-on to better assume its “corporate responsibility”.  The era of “easy” money therefore seems to be behind us, and we believe that, in this new context, expertise and know-how to support the growth of profitable Tech companies will regain their full meaning.

 Tech Buyout players will also have to prove their ability to diversify into perhaps less "mainstream" segments (marketplaces or other B2C models, for example) than Software and IT Services, which currently represent more than 70% of the amounts invested in Tech Buyouts.
Like Venture Capital in the early 2000s, we therefore anticipate a form of rationalization for Buyout funds, which will clearly have to equip themselves to address this market in all its complexity.
The fundamentals of this market remain strong and promising in the medium term. Tech companies, and especially B2B Tech companies, have relatively low exposure to the vagaries of logistics or raw materials; the needs for digitalization and productivity gains remain; and the expectations of entrepreneurs are numerous.

Building bridges between Venture Capital and Tech Buyout

Within the ISAI Expansion team, when we question our approach, our values, ​​and the way in which we can progress in this chaotic context, an essential element resurfaces: what is our intimate understanding of the sector in which we operate?
As such, and even if the codes between these two worlds are very different, the links between the worlds of Buyout and Venture remain particularly strong due to the nature of the Tech sector. That is because start-ups are at the origin of many innovations that will, sooner or later, impact profitable Tech SMEs/ETIs eligible for an LBO.

A representative example, among others, is Product Management: initiated by start-ups, the practice of Product Management, this new, more agile and iterative way of designing digital products, is now being adopted by numerous SMEs/ETIs and the larger groups themselves.

It is this bond, this understanding of the Venture space, that strengthens the ISAI Expansion team today more than ever. Most of our specificities stem from this, including a minority culture, a way to influence through expertise, and our ability to co-invest when needed.

If Tech Buyout is now mainly focused on "bootstrapped" companies, with no real continuity with Venture Capital, we are convinced that the reinforcement of this link between start-ups and Tech SMEs / ETI  under LBO is an incredible source of opportunities for the years to come, through the natural purpose of the latter to consolidate part of the former, and to offer a new gateway to liquidity for Venture Capital funds.

At ISAI, we are particularly enthusiastic about the idea of ​​co-building this new stage of the Tech Buyout segment, now identified as one of the essential links within the Tech ecosystem.

Pierre Martini

Managing partner, ISAI expansion

[1] LBO - Leverage Buy Out - type of transaction in which a company is purchased using a combination of equity and debt.

[2]  Source: ISAI, compound annual growth rate of ISAI Expansion current portfolio between ISAI entry date and 31.12.22.

[3] Source: Global Private Equity Report 2020, Bain & Company

ISAI ACQUIRES A MINORITY STAKE IN HUBVISORY, CONSULTING AGENCY SPECIALIZED IN DIGITAL PRODUCTS

ISAI, a French leading investment fund in Tech & Digital private companies, announces that it has acquired, through a LBO transaction, a minority stake in Hubvisory, a consulting agency specialized in supporting large accounts and scale-ups in their innovations, transformations, and creations of successful digital products. The founders will remain as a majority shareholder alongside ISAI. 

The common objective is to accelerate Hubvisory’s development to become the leader of the promising and fast-growing Product Management consulting market in France.

Founded in 2016, Hubvisory offers complementary services to accompany its clients from the discovery to the delivery of successful digital products and to set up efficient organization to do so. The company is known as an expert in bridging the gap between technology on one hand and business & user experience on the other hand with a customer-centric approach. With its high reputation and its loyal workforce of c. 100 employees, Hubvisory provides skilled services to its diversified customer-base.

“After creating Hubvisory in 2016 when digital products became strategic to every company, we have developed our expertise to ensure that each product is economically viable, reliable, and durable on the technical level while being desirable by the users.” Explains Martin Canton-Lauga, co-founder of Hubvisory.

“Our partnership with ISAI will allow us to accelerate our expansion by strengthening Hubvisory’s brand name, accelerating on recruitments, developing new offers and extending our geographical footprint in Europe, starting with Belgium.” Continues Benoit Rosier, co-founder of Hubvisory.

“After 6 years of independence and bootstrapping, ISAI convinced us to be part of the journey thanks to their deep knowledge, their track-record within the business services industry and their understanding of our activity. We also believe that it is a perfect match with our culture and our fundamental values.” Concludes Pierre Cathelin, co-founder of Hubvisory.

Creating a leading European specialist in Digital Product Management

Hubvisory tripled its revenues since 2019 while maintaining a strong profitability thanks to its expertise and its added value services. With the support of ISAI, Hubvisory is seeking to hire more than 200 consultants over the next five years and to unleash already identified value creation levers. The company is also well engaged in environmental and social issues, with a dedicated team “Hub’for Good” actively working on a wide range of initiatives (e.g. on-going B-Corp certification). Moreover, one of the main focuses with support of ISAI will be to quickly implement and maintain an inclusive policy.

“We first met with Martin, Benoit and Pierre in 2019 and have built a trustful relationship since then through regular interactions. We are thrilled to help them in developing Hubvisory both in France and Europe through our ninth investment with ISAI Expansion II fund.” Says Christophe Poupinel, General Partner at ISAI.

“We have been impressed by Hubvisory’s team expertise and reputation, and we strongly believe that the company is very-well positioned to accelerate its development and capture the growth of this new, promising market.” Concludes Pierre Dumas, Investment Director at ISAI.

ISAI’s investment is made by its ISAI Expansion II fund, focusing on profitable Tech & Digital growth and buyout companies.

About Hubvisory

Hubvisory is a consulting agency specializing in Product. The company supports startups and large groups to innovate, transform and create successful digital products. Created in 2016, the company employs more than 100 consultants with offices in Paris, Lille and soon Brussels.

For more information: https://hubvisory.com/en

About ISAI Gestion

ISAI Gestion (“ISAI”) is a pioneer in French Tech & Digital private investments co-founded in 2009 by successful Tech entrepreneurs - including Pierre Kosciusko-Morizet, Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux, Stéphane Treppoz - and backed by 300+ Entrepreneurs’ LP and major institutional investors. Holding close its core values of Entrepreneurship, Honesty and Caring, ISAI is a team of 20+ professionals based in Paris and NYC who all share the same guiding values of entrepreneurial success. The company is majority-owned by its employees. It keeps entrepreneurship at its heart and focuses on delivering excellent investment performance to its investor base. ISAI currently manages €550m of assets through four pillars of investment expertise: Early-Stage Venture Capital, Late-Stage Venture Capital, Private Debt and Growth / Buyout. It is a household name associated with recognized Tech & Digital successes: Blablacar, 360Learning, Labelium, LegalStart, Theodo, aDvens, Copado, Alation, DataDome, Malt, Prose, StickyAds, Evaneos, etc.
ISAI is a signatory of the UNPRI and actively committed in making the Tech more Inclusive and Carbon efficient.

For more information: www.isai.vc

Hubvisory: Pierre Cathelin, Benoit Rosier, Martin Canton-Lauga

ISAI: Christophe Poupinel, Pierre Dumas, Valentine Loyer

ISAI advisors:

Financial: d’Ornano + Co (Raphaëlle d’Ornano, Adrien d’Hauthuille, Lauren Goodenough, Guillaume Lefèvre)

Tax & Legal: Piotraut Giné Avocats (Raphaël Piotraut, Arnaud Viard, Myriam Zendjebil, Tristan Boisdron, Patrice Antunes)

Social: Nerval Avocats (Christophe Lopez)

ESG: PwC (François Thueux, Colette Ashley)

Debt providers: BNP Paribas (Rebecca Jolly, Daniel Ardeljan, Virginie Briton), LCL (Aurore Bourneuf, Julien Limouzin, Ariane Tual)

Hubvisory advisors: Legal advisors: Henri Stiegler, Léa Levesque, Charles Ghuysen

Contacts

Kablé Communication Nolwenn Salaün | nolwenn.salaun@kable-communication.com |M: +33 (0)6 68 41 54 32

ISAI Caroline Gibert | caroline.gibert@isai.fr | M: +33 (0)6 99 91 06 60

Hubvisory Chloé Largeau | chloe.largeau@hubvisory.com |

PELICO RAISES 18.5 MILLION EUROS TO BECOME THE OPERATING MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR MANUFACTURERS

Pelico, the factory operations SaaS platform that empowers manufacturers to deal with rising levels of complexity and volatility in their operations, today announced that it has raised $18M led by 83North and Serena with participation from La Famiglia & ISAI as well as multiple business angels such as Adrien Nussenbaum (Mirakl), Carsten Thoma (Hybris), Bastian Nominacher (Celonis)... This new fund will give the opportunity to Pelico to grow its team, significantly invest in its technology and expand its presence internationally.

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Helping manufacturers deal with complex & volatile supply chains

Supply chain and manufacturing have become more complex than ever, with volatile demand, fragmented supply chains and an increasing complexity in products. Because operational context changes faster than the teams’ ability to plan, those teams spend their time firefighting these unplanned disruptions. This puts at risk revenue as sales are delayed, and margins as last minute solutions are costly. Pelico acts as an operations management system for factory teams. It empowers factory teams to:

• continuously anticipate material availability issues,

• act fast with AI-assisted recommendations and simulations,

• quickly resolve issues with team collaboration over a common view of data.

Since its creation in 2019, multiple industry leaders in France, Germany and Switzerland chose Pelico across a diverse range of industries, from Aerospace with Collins Aerospace, to Defense with Safran or Luxury... Thanks to its experienced engineers and data scientists teams, Pelico helped Safran reduce parts shortages by 88% and Collins Aerospace reduced MRO cycle times by 50%.

“The complexity of operations in discrete manufacturing is constantly increasing as we are switching from a model of mass production to a model based on personalized products, reduced volumes and shorter cycle times. This complexity is also reinforced by recurring supply chain shocks (brexit, covid, ukrainian war…). Our job is to absorb all this complexity in order to help operational teams continuously monitor risks in the production chain and facilitate the decision-making process across the factory” explains Tarik Benabdallah, CEO and Co-founder of Pelico.

To continue its growth and become the Operating System of the modern factory, Pelico will open 50 new positions in France and in the US within the next 18 months. The company which opened an office in the US in 2022 aims to strengthen its international presence to support its customers with a global footprint. This fundraising will also give the opportunity to Pelico to invest in its technology and product, enabling its intelligent assistant to tackle more use cases for factory teams.

“The Covid crisis has created new challenges and an explosion of last-minute unplanned issues in factory operations and production planning. Pelico has enabled us, thanks to digitalization tools, to optimize and make our industrial risk management processes more robust.” Pauline Casta, SIOP and Material Manager at Collins Aerospace.

“The complexity of industrial operations has greatly increased in the pandemic and economic context of the last two years. To enable operational teams to manage their production in an optimal way, Pelico has developed a suite of analysis, collaboration and simulation tools that is unique on the market and can be deployed in only a few weeks. Two years after meeting founders Tarik, Mamoun, and Jonathan at the inception of Pelico, we are very excited to partner with them in this important expansion phase.” Xavier Lorphelin, Managing Partner at Serena

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About Pelico

Pelico is a startup based in Paris created late 2019 by engineers coming from both the manufacturing and tech worlds. Pelico’s operations management system connects factory teams to manage daily volatility and deliver products on time, at cost. It empowers factory teams to continuously anticipate bottlenecks, act fast with AI-assisted recommendations, and collaborate across teams on the implementation of corrective actions.

About 83North

83North is a global venture capital firm with over $2.2B under management. The fund invests across all stages, in exceptional entrepreneurs, whose focus is to build global category leading companies.

83North has backed more than 85 companies including AeroScout (acquired by Stanley Black & Decker), Celonis, Hybris (acquired by SAP), iZettle (acquired by PayPal), Just Eat (LSE:JE), Marqeta (NASDAQ: MQ), Mirakl, Payoneer (NASDAQ: PAYO), ScaleIO (acquired by EMC), Vast, Vdoo (acquired by JFROG), Via, Wandera (acquired by Jamf) and Wolt (acquired by DoorDash).

About Serena Capital

Serena invests in bold ventures and provides them with an unrivaled level of expertise and operational resources in Paris and New York.

Serena’s portfolio can leverage an experienced team of Operating Partners and a very active C-Level community, the Serena Squad, open exclusively to present and past companies, each contributing to the other's success.

Founded in 2008 by entrepreneurs for entrepreneurs, Serena’s core belief is that VCs should work for their organizations, not the other way around.

About La Famiglia

La Famiglia is a European seed and growth stage venture capital fund investing in technology companies that enable or disrupt large industries. We are backed by a selection of world-leading entrepreneurs from various industries that provide precious early market access, impactful partnerships and deep expertise for our portfolio companies.

More than a regular venture fund, La Famiglia serves as a trusted access platform creating unique relationships between the old and the new world, enabling real differentiated leverage on capital.

About ISAI

Nearly 300 successful entrepreneurs, who have invested in ISAI funds, and more than 50 ISAI-backed start-up co-founders share the collective ambition of co-writing great entrepreneurial stories. ISAI invests in differentiated projects run by ambitious teams that it selects rigorously and actively supports. ISAI Gestion, an investment management company approved by the AMF, with over €500 million under management, aims to finance and support high potential Tech companies, at the seed/post-seed stage (venture capital, ticket from € 150k ticket to € 3m with participations in successive rounds) or when they have already reached the break-even stage (Tech Growth/LBO, tickets from €5m to €50m).

About the business angels

• Carsten Thomas - Founder Hybris, ex-SAP Executive

• Adrien Nussenbaum - CEO Mirakl

• Bastian Nominacher - CEO Celonis

• Alex LeQuoc - CTO Datadog

• Florian Douetteau - CEO Dataiku

• Jonathan Benhamou & Clément Buyse - People doc

• Charles Miglietti - CEO Toucan Toco
  

DILITRUST JOINS FORCES WITH HYPERLEX, REINFORCING ITS POSITION AS EUROPEAN LEGALTECH CHAMPION

DiliTrust, a SaaS software developer for legal departments with more than 2,000 customers in over fifty countries, announces it is merging with contract management system Hyperlex, with the support of financial partners Cathay Capital, Eurazeo, and Sagard NewGen. The combination of DiliTrust's and Hyperlex's services and expertise positions the new entity as a key partner for legal departments, offering a unique mix of service, technology, and know-how. By adding the cutting-edge technological expertise of Hyperlex, an intelligent contract management and analysis solution, DiliTrust is quickly accelerating to become the European champion of LegalTech.

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This transaction, which follows major fundraising from Cathay Capital, Eurazeo and Sagard NewGen, enables DiliTrust to strengthen its portfolio of solutions in the key area of contract management as Hyperlex is a SaaS solution that structures and accelerates companies’ contractual process thanks to proprietary artificial intelligence. Hyperlex is user-centric, simplifying day-to-day legal and operational work, and supports professionals by optimizing the contract life cycle and enabling recurring tasks: recognizing contract type, clauses, drafting and negotiation, signature, and life cycle monitoring. DiliTrust will thus provide legal departments with an integrated suite of secure and innovative solutions designed to meet all their needs in digital transformation, collaboration, and compliance.

The merger will also help Hyperlex expand thanks to DiliTrust’s broad global reach, with over 25 years of experience in providing legal departments of large groups and mid-sized companies with an integrated suite of secure solutions covering the management of entities, board meetings, litigation and data rooms. DiliTrust is present on four continents and generates half of its revenue outside of France.

"This transaction, carried out with the strategic and financial support of our partners Cathay Capital, Eurazeo and Sagard NewGen, confirms DiliTrust's ambition to become the leader in solutions for legal departments thanks to its unique positioning. DiliTrust and Hyperlex share the same vision, a common passion for legal combined with technology, and the same values of innovation in customer service, team spirit and excellence. Our daily dealings with legal professionals allow us to anticipate their needs and improve the efficiency of legal departments. The promise of the DiliTrust Governance suite, which Hyperlex will reinforce, is to provide solutions that are easy to deploy and use, and that accelerate our customers' digital transformation," said Yves GARAGNON, CEO of DiliTrust. "One month after the new resources entrusted to us by our shareholder funds, we are pursuing our commitment to serve our clients better and better with the most relevant solutions to meet their needs," he added.

"We are delighted to join the DiliTrust group, whose services complement Hyperlex’s perfectly. Today, companies are aware that legal processes, especially contract management, are becoming critical, and a major performance issue. Together with DiliTrust, we are ideally positioned to meet these needs. We share DiliTrust's deep entrepreneurial culture, but above all, the ambition to become a European champion of LegalTech that will accelerate and secure legal processes to better serve companies' business challenges" says Alexandre GRUX, CEO of Hyperlex.

The 60 members of the Hyperlex team (technology and product experts, marketing and sales forces), based in France, will join the 170 experts at DiliTrust, which plans to strengthen its workforce with an ambitious worldwide recruitment plan in 2022.

With a LegalTech market in total flux, DiliTrust makes its first major growth acquisition with Hyperlex.

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About Hyperlex
Hyperlex is a user-friendly and secure online contract management solution designed to structure and accelerate companies contractual processes. From contract generation to renewal, negotiation, signature and centralized storage, Hyperlex supports legal and operational teams in a new way of working together, 100% digital and secure, so they can focus on their core business.

About DiliTrust
DiliTrust provides the DiliTrust Governance suite, designed to overcome the challenges of digital transformation for legal departments. This unified, intuitive, and user-friendly SaaS platform meets the highest international security standards. It includes different modules, such as digitizing board meetings and management of legal entities, contracts, litigation, and disputes. DiliTrust has more than 2,000 customers in approximately 50 countries. Major groups in Europe, North America, Africa, and the Middle East have placed their trust in DiliTrust

Open2Europe Press Contact
Emily Glynn - +33 1 55 02 27 93 - e.glynn@open2europe.com

FLOWDESK, THE FRENCH DIGITAL ASSET FINANCIAL TECHNOLOGY PROVIDER, RAISES $30 MILLION

Flowdesk announced that it has raised $30 million from leading investors such as Eurazeo, Aglaé Ventures, ISAI, Speedinvest, Fabric.vc, Ledger, and Coinbase, and 20 well-known business angels, including Alexandre Prot (Qonto), Nicolas Julia (Sorare), Pascal Gauthier (Ledger) and Sébastien Borget (The Sandbox).

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A trading infrastructure made in France

Active in the cryptocurrency sector for several years, the four co-founders of Flowdesk, Guilhem Chaumont, Paul Bugnot, François Cluzeau and Balthazar Giraux have been working in this sector since 2017 after careers in banking, algorithmic trading, engineering and entrepreneurship. During their respective experiences, they were marked by the siloing and fracturing of marketplaces and the technological barrier to properly handle the liquidity of crypto-asset projects. In 2020 they chose to develop an infrastructure that would allow them to interconnect and trade on these exchanges, while guaranteeing the redundancy and scalability needed to support the growing number of crypto projects.

An innovative product: Market-Making-as-a-Service (MMaaS)

Flowdesk is thus the originator of a trading infrastructure that allows interconnection with more than 60 cryptocurrency exchange platforms. A technology that its teams use on behalf of Flowdesk as well as for their clients and which allows them to offer four types of services:

• Asset management

• Brokerage

• Custody

• Market-making

Market-making is Flowdesk’s flagship service and its most differentiating product. It addresses the needs of the majority of the 10,000 cryptocurrency issuers with significant liquidity issues. By making its technology and traders available to these players, Flowdesk allows them to manage their cryptocurrency token liquidity themselves with their own funds. The service is called Market-Making-as-a-Service in reference to digital models based on simply providing technology to customers who commit their own resources.

A decisive fund-raising to change scale

Although Flowdesk’s team consisted only of its four co-founders at the beginning of 2021, the company now employs 35 people and plans to recruit to reach 100 employees before the end of 2022. A change of scale for which fundraising was necessary. Flowdesk is indeed facing an extremely strong demand in market-making and after having opened offices in Singapore in March 2022, is now targeting the United States to deploy sales and trading teams as well as legal compliance specialists, a particularly strategic topic for the company and its constantly changing regulatory market.

For Guilhem Chaumont, co-founder and CEO of Flowdesk: “This fundraising is a key step that will allow us to accelerate at all levels to meet the growing demand in Europe, Asia and North America. It will also give us the means to develop our technological infrastructure to meet the new needs that will emerge in market making. Our vision is that within 10 years a large proportion of assets will be tokenized using blockchain technology, which will require a rethinking of financial services with a more scalable and counterparty agnostic approach. We will have to scale up quickly to integrate this new financial situation. ”

For Thomas Turelier, Vice President at Eurazeo: “An increasing number of companies are issuing tokens and are thus confronted with the complexity of managing a liquid asset in different markets. Most of these companies do not, however, see themselves as financial market professionals: they are technology providers, game developers... A financial infrastructure such as the one proposed by Flowdesk is therefore crucial to allow all these web3 players to develop with the least possible friction while trusting a regulated player aligned with its customers in terms of financial interests. ”

For Cyril Guenoun, Partner at Aglaé Ventures: “We were convinced by Flowdesk’s positioning as a technology provider for cryptocurrency issuers. This emerging and fast-growing market needs scalable tools to ensure secure and sustainable development. The team has proven the robustness of its solution as well as a business model adapted to its customers. With an already international presence and strong speed of execution, Flowdesk has the means to drive the growth of financial services for cryptocurrencies. ”

Innovating to empower customers

Another ambition of this fundraising is to continue to invest in innovation with the aim of developing a complete platform for Flowdesk’s clients, allowing them to carry out the simplest to the most complex trading operations themselves. A model that will contribute to Flowdesk’s position as a leader in Market-Making-as-a-Service.

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About Flowdesk

Founded in 2020 by Guilhem Chaumont, Paul Bugnot, François Cluzeau and Balthazar Giraux, Flowdesk is a digital asset service provider registered in France with the Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF). Flowdesk is the originator of a trading infrastructure that allows interconnection with more than 60 cryptocurrency exchange platforms. The company offers four types of services: asset management, brokerage, custody and market-making. The company has offices in Paris and Singapore.

PR Contacts
flowdesk@wachsman.com