Ivalua Raises one of France’s Largest Ever Growth Equity Capital Rounds
from KKR to Accelerate its Expansion in the $24.5 billion Spend
Management Software Market
SAN FRANCISCO, NEW YORK, PARIS & LONDON–(BUSINESS WIRE)–
Ivalua, a market-leading Spend Management software company,
headquartered in Redwood City, California and Paris, today announced
that it has raised a $70M growth equity minority funding from KKR, a
leading global investor, to realize its ambition of becoming the global
leader in the fast-growing Spend Management Market. KKR will become a
new shareholder alongside the Founders and Ardian, which invested in
Ivalua in 2011.
Spend management software is increasingly becoming a strategic tool for
businesses as it boosts profitability by streamlining procurement
processes, putting an end to rogue spending and managing all vendors and
contracts through a centralized platform. The $24.5 billion spend
management market is developing rapidly and emerging as a highly dynamic
segment of the broader software-as-a-service (SaaS) market.
Ivalua’s Source-to-Pay (S2P) platform is relied on by over 250 blue chip
customers globally, including Honeywell, the City of New York, Veolia,
Thales, Orange, Michelin, and Deutsche Telekom. Its market-leading
end-to-end spend management platform uniquely combines a comprehensive
full-suite offering with significant flexibility, which allows large
multinational organizations and public sector players to easily
configure the solution to their complex needs. Ivalua’s solution was
recognized by Gartner as a Leader in its ‘Magic Quadrant for Strategic
Sourcing Application Suites 2017’, as well as a Value Leader and
Customer Leader in the latest eProcurement SolutionMap released by
SpendMatters.
David Khuat-Duy, CEO and Founder of Ivalua, said: “The Spend
management software market is undergoing a huge transformation, coming
out from under the shadow of better-known SaaS sectors. Ivalua is a
success story in this strategic market. Its strong and differentiated
product allows for flexibility and easy vertical integration and has led
to the highest client retention rate in the market. We are partnering
with KKR to facilitate further investment and innovation in our suite
and accelerate our pursuit of becoming the clear leader in the
source-to-pay market. For us, KKR is the right partner because of their
global network, deep expertise in procurement and technology, and
experience in partnering with growth stage companies and entrepreneurs
to help them achieve their global ambitions.”
Lucian Schoenefelder, Director at KKR, said: “After our
successful investments in Fotolia, OVH and Captain Train, Ivalua is our
fourth investment into a French technology company over the last few
years, which speaks to the strength of the local technology ecosystem.
We are incredibly excited about partnering with the founders and Ardian.
KKR is very well-positioned to help Ivalua fulfill its global ambitions
given our track-record of scaling European technology companies with the
help of our global platform and KKR’s portfolio of more than 120
companies, many of which could benefit from Ivalua’s product.”
Stephen Shanley, Principal at KKR, said: “Ivalua was born out of
the world-class French software engineering community and has developed
into one of the most promising tech companies in the European ecosystem.
We were highly impressed by Ivalua’s best-in-class product, strong
founder-led team, and demonstrated ability to scale with both high
growth and profitability. These characteristics make Ivalua a strong
investment for our growth equity strategy. We look forward to deploying
the full resources of the KKR platform to help accelerate Ivalua’s
ambitious growth strategy.”
Laurent Foata, Head of Ardian Growth (historical investor of the
company) added: “After several years alongside Ivalua to support their
US strategy, KRR is the natural next step partner for the founders and
us. We share the vision and the strong ambition of the management and
KKR. This new step demonstrates our ability to turn European players
into global leaders on their market.”
KKR is making the investment from its Next Generation Technology fund, a
$711 million fund dedicated to growth equity investment opportunities in
the technology sector.
About Ivalua
Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, Ivalua’s
leading global Spend Management Cloud solution is recognized for
Leadership in both the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Strategic Sourcing and
Spend Matters SolutionMap for eProcurement in 2017. Ivalua’s
Out-of-the-box Deep Functionality and Configurable Cloud is fast to
deploy and enables high supplier and employee adoption. Ivalua has been
deployed to manage over $500 Billion in spend. Learn more at www.ivalua.com.
About KKR
KKR is a leading global investment firm that manages investments across
multiple asset classes including private equity, energy, infrastructure,
real estate, credit and hedge funds. KKR aims to generate attractive
investment returns by following a patient and disciplined investment
approach, employing world‐class people, and driving growth and value
creation at the asset level. KKR invests its own capital alongside its
partners’ capital and brings opportunities to others through its capital
markets business. References to KKR’s investments may include the
activities of its sponsored funds. For additional information about KKR
& Co. L.P. (NYSE:KKR), please visit KKR’s website at www.kkr.com and
on Twitter @KKR_Co.
About Ardian
Ardian, founded in 1996 and led by Dominique Senequier, is an
independent private investment company with assets of US$60bn managed or
advised in Europe, North America and Asia. The company, which is
majority-owned by its employees, keeps entrepreneurship at its heart and
delivers investment performance to its global investors while fueling
growth in economies across the world. Ardian relies on a solid
international network, with more than 450 employees working in twelve
offices in Paris, London, Frankfurt, Milan, Madrid, Zurich, New York,
San Francisco, Beijing, Singapore, Jersey and Luxembourg. The company
offers its 580 investors a diversified selection of funds covering the
entire asset class, with Ardian Fund of Funds (primary, early secondary
and secondary), Ardian Private Debt, Ardian Buyout (including Ardian Mid
Cap Buyout Europe & North America, Ardian Expansion, Ardian Growth and
Ardian Co-Investment), Ardian Infrastructure, Ardian Real Estate and
Ardian Mandates.

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John Costello
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t:
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or
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Source: KKR