LYON, France - February 2024

Fluid Topics, the leading Content Delivery Platform for product information, announced today the successful completion of its Series B funding round. Kennet Partners, a growth equity investor focused on capital-efficient companies, has invested €15 million in the company to reinforce Fluid Topics’ premier position on the market by scaling operations across the United States and leveraging the potential of artificial intelligence in customer support applications. Existing investors include Ventech, the pioneering pan-European early-stage VC, and Credit Mutuel Innovation.

Founded in 1999 by Fabrice Lacroix, Fluid Topics pivoted in 2014 when it launched its Content Delivery platform, reinventing how people search, read, and interact with product documentation. "For complex products, documentation often runs to tens of thousands or even millions of pages. This makes it extremely difficult for maintenance and repair technicians to find their way around. Fluid Topics has revolutionized customer support by guiding technicians to the information they need at any stage of their service calls", explains Fabrice Lacroix, CEO of Fluid Topics.

Specifically, Fluid Topics’ SaaS-based platform unifies all product knowledge from a company: technical documentation, datasheets, marketing material, multimedia and more. It then delivers it as actionable information tailored to the user in a contextualized, personalized, and secure way, via business applications and digital communication channels.

A global enterprise customer base

Having developed almost exclusively internationally, Fluid Topics now generates 60% of its sales in North America and 40% in Europe, particularly in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and the Nordics, with steady annual growth of over 45%. The company is serving a prominent customer base, including Fortune 500 companies and industry leaders such as Liebherr, Siemens, Johnson Controls, and Teradata. Over the past years, Fluid Topics has become the go-to solution for tech companies of all sizes seeking to enhance user self-service, case deflection, customer support, and field service operations with distinctive business applications fueled by product knowledge.

The funding aims to maintain the growth rate achieved by Fluid Topics in recent years. The company expects to increase sales to over 25 million euros in the next 3 years, while its workforce plans to grow from 80 to 150 employees by 2027.

This growth will be supported by opening a US team in 2024, whose mission will be to target the SMB market, which is more difficult to address from France.

Virtual assistants to guide technicians

The integration of Generative AI is the second major area of development. Artificial intelligence offers major opportunities for applications based on product content and strengthens the market position of Fluid Topics which has over 20 years' experience in semantic search, natural language processing, and content governance. Specifically, Generative AI will enable virtual assistants to guide technicians while working on products, and answer their questions, even the most complex ones.

“Fabrice and the team have built an exciting business in a highly capital-efficient manner. We have been impressed by Fluid Topic’s strong financial performance and high-quality enterprise customer base. We are very excited to be partnering with the company to help it scale in the US and to further capitalize on the opportunities that AI enables,” said Hillel Zidel, Managing Director of Kennet.

Cillian Hilliard, Director, and Hillel Zidel, Managing Director at Kennet, will join Fluid Topics’ board of directors, alongside current members Claire Houry, General Partner at Ventech, and Maxence Valero, Investment Director at Credit Mutuel Innovation. Eric Barroca, founder and former CEO of Nuxeo, a Content Services platform for which Kennet helped accelerate the growth trajectory between 2016 and 2021, will also be appointed as an independent board member. Barroca’s successful development of Nuxeo and deep expertise in AI will further strengthen Fluid Topics’ commitment to strategic expansion.

“This funding round empowers us to accelerate in a market shifting rapidly towards solutions that transform operations and enhance competitiveness. As the leading platform, we take pride in offering cutting-edge technologies with utmost attention to security and seamless implementation,” said Fabrice Lacroix, CEO of Fluid Topics.

About Antidot:

Antidot is a SaaS company that leverages over 20 years of advanced research in semantic search, artificial intelligence, and content accessibility to develop Fluid Topics, the leading Content Delivery Platform for product information.

Fluid Topics unifies product content from all existing sources and delivers it as actionable information tailored to the user and situation. Serving Fortune 500 companies and tech organizations of all sizes, Fluid Topics is the go-to solution for tech companies seeking to enhance customer service and field service operations with distinctive business applications fueled by product knowledge. For more information, visit www.fluidtopics.com.

LONDON, England - February 2024

Screendragon Ltd., a technology leader in SaaS-based workflow automation, announced today that Kennet Partners and Federated Hermes Private Equity, have invested €25m in the software company to drive the continued expansion of the business.

Screendragon is a highly awarded platform serving the agency and marketing sectors. Their platform is designed to automate complex workflows, connect distributed teams and provide visibility and agility at scale. Powering many of the most well-known brands and agencies, it helps teams plan, innovate, create and deliver content to market efficiently and effectively. In a margin-compressed, P&L-constrained environment, where teams are asked to take on increasingly heavier workloads, Screendragon eliminates unnecessary work and compresses cycle time enabling teams to be more efficient while focusing on the work they were hired to do versus managing workflow processes.   

The €25 million investment aims to facilitate a commitment to invest in the company’s Irish operation, doubling Screendragon’s workforce in Cork and underpinning the further expansion of the company into the US market. The company’s executive leadership team, and founders, John Briggs, Jan Quant and Fergus Ashe will continue to lead the company with Executive Chairman, Clive Sirkin assuming the role of Chairman of a newly constituted Board of Directors.

Kennet is leading the round alongside Federated Hermes Private Equity, who have over two decades of experience investing alongside private equity firms with $6.3bn of assets under management.

In addition to Clive Sirkin, Cillian Hilliard, Director and Michael Elias, Managing Director of Kennet and Fidel Manolopoulos, Partner & Co-Head of EMEA Investment at Federated Hermes Private Equity will also join Screendragon’s board of directors. An independent board member will be named shortly. 

“We were impressed with Screendragon’s bootstrapped growth story. The team has outcompeted software giants to win some of the world's largest brands as customers without raising any institutional capital. Our investment demonstrates the confidence we have in Screendragon’s differentiated technology, the existing team and its blue-chip customer base. With additional resources to strengthen the team in Cork and the US, and scaling of the existing leadership talent, we are confident we can transform the business into a global leader”, said Cillian Hilliard, Director of Kennet.

“Jan, Fergus, Clive and I vetted several investment firms over many months for possible investment,” said John Briggs co-CEO and founder of Screendragon. “Kennet Partners has a proven track record of growing successful businesses. We are looking forward to using this investment and adding resources to accelerate sales, product roadmap, and growth objectives while continuing to deliver the innovative technology and support our existing clients have come to expect.”

About Screendragon

Screendragon is a work automation platform that powers many of the most well-known brand and agency organizations. Over 20+ years, they have developed an industry-leading technology that has been recognized as best in class and highly differentiated. Their software helps brand and agency teams plan, innovate, create and deliver content to market efficiently and effectively. Screendragon’s unique no-code workflow technology enables the company to provide solutions to customers that are both agile and intuitive to use from the get-go.

About Federated Hermes Private Equity

Federated Hermes Private Equity is an active and long-time investor in global private equity. For over 30 years, the firm has specialized in investing in what Federated Hermes considers to be the best and most relevant investment opportunities in global private equity. The objective is to create sustainable returns for investors, no matter what is happening on the global stage via pooled funds and bespoke client solutions. Focus on fund investments and co-investments in buyouts and growth businesses with $6.3bn of assets under management, as of 30 September 2023.

LONDON, England - January 2024

Kennet Partners, Great Hill Partners and EIFO have recently entered into an agreement to sell co-owned portfolio company, Eloomi, a Learning and Development platform provider to Ceridian, a global human capital management (HCM) software company. Kennet will generate a return in excess of 3x their investment in Eloomi.

Founded in 2015, Eloomi is a SaaS learning and development platform that makes it easy for companies worldwide to train and develop their people. Today, thousands of organizations trust Eloomi to manage their learning and people development. Since Kennet first invested in Eloomi in 2019, the company has grown rapidly to 150 employees and now has a significant presence in the Nordics, UK and USA.

Over the last five years Kennet has supported Eloomi’s founder and CEO, Claus Johansen to build Eloomi’s management team, expand Eloomi internationally and to accelerate the company’s growth.

Hillel Zidel, Managing Director, Kennet Partners, said: 

“Eloomi is a great example of the type of company in which we seek to invest. It was clear that the business had solid foundations but needed support and capital to scale-up and expand into the UK and US. We were able to support Claus Johansen and the team to accelerate Eloomi’s growth trajectory and are proud of what we have collectively achieved. We wish the company all the best as it moves into the next chapter in its exciting development.”

Claus Johansen, Founder and CEO, Eloomi, said: 

At Eloomi we are proud of the journey and collaboration with Kennet Partners over the past 5 years. Kennet gave us great support when needed, challenged us in the right moments, and were professionals that had a real interest in the team, the business and the sector. It has been a blast for us to work with Kennet on our journey. Kennet has been a strong contributor to our success so far. We now look forward to working with the team at Ceridian”

About Eloomi:

Founded in 2015 with offices in Copenhagen, London and Orlando, Eloomi offers a cloud-based Learning and People Development platform to global corporates. Eloomi has succeeded in taking large market share due to its understanding of customer demands and a focus on innovation. Eloomi offers an intuitive, easy to use and out of the box product with strong AI features. For more information: www.eloomi.com

LONDON, England - August 2022

Jiminny, a UK headquartered conversation intelligence provider supporting sales teams across the world, has closed a $16.5 million series A funding round. The round was led by Kennet Partners, a transatlantic growth equity firm, adding to its targeted portfolio of technology growth stage investments. 

Sales teams use Jiminny’s platform to record and analyse new and existing customer conversations in real-time. These insights are used by the business to improve performance and ultimately drive revenue and growth. A range of organisations, from FTSE 100 constituent Informa to Europe's leading expense management solution, Pleo, are using the platform.

Jiminny is a market leader in the rapidly growing conversation intelligence market for B2B teams. Demand for conversation intelligence solutions has increased in recent years with more sales teams looking to utilise tools suited to hybrid working, scale up operations and professionalise sales team coaching. In parallel, senior business leaders are looking to use technology to upskill current sales teams against the backdrop of challenging job markets and narrowing budgets.

The funding round will accelerate Jiminny’s recruitment, including its expansion in international markets, and ambitious product development plans. The company will double its R&D budget to continue driving innovation in the nascent conversation intelligence market. Key areas marked for development include solutions to analyse emotion in video, automated scoring of call interactions and real time insights generated from live transcriptions to drive true visibility of performance.

Tom Lavery, CEO and Founder, Jiminny said:

“I’m delighted to announce details of today’s funding round which will further propel Jiminny’s growth and enable us to keep supporting and serving our customers to the high standards we set."

“The pandemic saw a big uptick of interest in solutions that draw insights and analytics from customer conversations to enhance the productivity and internal cultures of hybrid sales teams. Our platform gives the whole revenue team visibility of performance like never before and helps them to collaborate and coach to drive tangible improvements across the team. "

“Kennet’s investment is a resounding vote of confidence in a rapidly growing company and one of the fastest growing verticals in sales technology, despite current global economic headwinds."

Hillel Zidel, Managing Director, Kennet Partners said:

“We believe that conversational intelligence is a long term growth industry and view Jiminny’s value proposition as unique and potentially transformational. The company is a great example of the kind of founder-led, customer centric, capital efficient business that we love to invest in”

“We are hugely excited to be partnering with Jiminny on the next stage of its development.” 

Jiminny currently employs 60+ people split across London, UK and Sofia, Bulgaria. Post investment round, the company is aiming to add a further 30+ people to its headcount with plans to establish a larger presence in international markets.

Oct. 30, 2020 - Onfleet, the fastest-growing provider of last mile delivery management software, announced it has raised $14 million in Series A funding to meet surging customer demand. The round was led by Kennet Partners and will allow Onfleet to continue broadening its product offerings and expanding its global footprint.

This funding round takes place on the heels of massive momentum for Onfleet, which has sustained profitability for several years and has experienced triple-digit revenue growth year-over-year. The company added hundreds of new customers this year and has doubled its year-over-year overall delivery volume as COVID-19 has rapidly accelerated retail’s transition to online, delivery-centric models. Onfleet has powered more than 80 million deliveries in more than 90 countries for thousands of clients including Kroger, Sweetgreen, Drizly, Imperfect Foods, Alto Pharmacy, and Gap, among others. This investment round was oversubscribed, and brings Onfleet’s total funding raised to $20 million since inception. 

“We are living in a time of never-before-seen global economic uncertainty, which has turned the need for fast, reliable delivery services from a luxury to a basic necessity,” said Khaled Naim, Co-Founder and CEO of Onfleet. “In a few short months, the importance of our work has become even more pronounced and we are doing everything that we can to help our clients quickly and efficiently deliver goods to their customers. We’re excited to partner with Kennet so we can double-down on our commitment to help companies adapt, evolve and scale in this challenging environment.”

Onfleet’s intuitive routing and dispatch platform enables real-time communications and proactive delivery management, guaranteeing fast, seamlessly executed deliveries, taking the hassle out of the delivery process and ensuring elated and loyal delivery recipients. Any industry that requires last mile delivery — from grocery stores, pharmacies and restaurants to beverage companies, retailers, ecommerce businesses and more — can leverage Onfleet to power more efficient deliveries to save valuable time, money and resources. Onfleet can scale with any company’s delivery operations, giving businesses of all sizes the confidence that the solution will grow with them as their operations expand.

“Online delivery is a long-term growth industry, and the COVID-19 pandemic has only accelerated its explosive adoption. In order to compete, brands will need to extend their customer relationship and service experience to the doorstep, which creates a large market need that Onfleet is well-positioned to solve,” said Javier Rojas, Managing Director at Kennet Partners. “Onfleet’s proficiency in building such a capital-efficient, product-led sales growth model, all while being self-funded, is no small feat. With this additional funding, we are confident Onfleet will continue to expand and scale rapidly to become a market-leading company.”

To learn more, please visit Onfleet.

About Onfleet
Onfleet is the fastest-growing provider of last mile delivery management software. The company powers hundreds of thousands of deliveries per day in more than 90 countries. Onfleet connects businesses, dispatchers and recipients in real time to simplify the last mile experience, resulting in increased operational efficiencies and consistent cost savings of 50% for customers. Launched in 2015, Onfleet is headquartered in San Francisco. Learn more at https://onfleet.com/.

About Kennet Partners
Founded in 1997, Kennet Partners is a Silicon Valley and London-based growth equity investor with $900 million under management. Kennet focuses on partnering with bootstrapped and fast-growing SaaS and tech-enabled services businesses with a focus on predictive analytics and AI and has a track record of building global market leaders and achieving high-value exits. For more information, visit kennet.com.

LOS ANGELES and LONDON, Oct. 2, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- BlackLine, Inc. (Nasdaq: BL), a leader in accounting automation software, announced today that it has completed the acquisition of Rimilia, an AI-powered cloud-based platform that enables accounts receivable (AR) automation and digital transformation.  With Rimilia, BlackLine strengthens its position with the Office of the Controller by driving end-to-end automation of the cash lifecycle and ensuring greater data integrity.  The acquisition expands BlackLine's capabilities into an adjacent area, adding AR automation to financial close automation and accelerating BlackLine's larger, long-term plan for transforming and modernizing Finance & Accounting. 

Headquartered in the United Kingdom, Rimilia is a leading provider of accounts receivable automation solutions that enable organizations to control cash flow and cash collection in real time.  Using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, the SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) platform simplifies the order-to-cash process by automating both the collection and allocation of customer cash.  Same-day cash allocation results in an unrivaled reduction in the number of days of sales outstanding, improves working capital and drives significant cost savings.  Built for large and medium-sized enterprises and capable of integrating with nearly all ERP, bank and currency platforms, Rimilia is used by leading companies in major verticals.

"With most companies using legacy, repetitive and manual processes to manage their order-to-cash, our customers and partners have long been asking for a solution that will enable better cash and liquidity management.  This is especially critical now in these difficult economic times," said Marc Huffman, president & COO of BlackLine. "This acquisition addresses that need and further expands BlackLine's position as an indispensable platform for the Office of the Controller.  Rimilia has created great value for its customers, and we are thrilled to build on the momentum the company has established to date while entering a new market and expanding our total addressable market opportunity."   

The AR market is a natural adjacency to the financial close with a shared buyer and similar pain points.  In addition, cash flow optimization has become increasingly relevant following the onset of the pandemic.   

"With accounts receivables serving as the single largest asset for most businesses, Rimilia's ability to unlock working capital and reduce risk is top of mind for today's controllers and CFOs," added Mr. Huffman, who will assume the BlackLine CEO title on Jan. 1, 2021. 

"Rimilia and BlackLine share a vision to drive digital transformation for Finance & Accounting with intelligent automation. BlackLine will provide the scale to further drive adoption of Rimilia's platform and deliver additional value to our customers," said Kevin Kimber, CEO of Rimilia.  "At the same time, Rimilia meets a need in the Office of the Controller that is highly complementary to BlackLine.  Our AR automation platform enables organizations to make faster and more accurate decisions, and I look forward to helping the thousands of BlackLine customers that are already enjoying the benefits of modern accounting."   

BlackLine completed the acquisition of Rimilia on Oct. 2, 2020.  In accordance with the terms and conditions of the transaction, BlackLine will acquire Rimilia for $150 million in cash, of which $120 million was payable at close with additional cash payments of up to $30 million upon certain earnout conditions being met.  BlackLine funded the transaction with existing cash on-hand.  There is no material impact to third quarter results.  Additional details regarding the anticipated financial impact of the acquisition will be provided in conjunction with BlackLine's third quarter earnings conference call on Thursday, Oct. 29, 2020.  In addition, BlackLine will introduce Rimilia to the broader BlackLine community at the company's annual user conference BeyondTheBlack™ 2020:  The Modern Accounting Virtual Experience which will take place Tuesday to Thursday, Nov. 17^th to 19^th. 

About BlackLine
Companies come to BlackLine (Nasdaq: BL) because their traditional manual accounting processes are not sustainable. BlackLine's cloud-based solutions and market-leading customer service help companies move to modern accounting by unifying their data and processes, automating repetitive work, and driving accountability through visibility.  BlackLine provides solutions for financial close management, accounting automation, and intercompany governance, helping large enterprises and midsize companies across all industries do accounting work better, faster, and with more control. 

More than 3,100 customers trust BlackLine to help them close faster with complete and accurate results.  The company is the pioneer and recognized Leader in Gartner's 2019 Magic Quadrant for Cloud Financial Close Solutions.  Based in Los Angeles, BlackLine also has regional headquarters in London, Singapore and Sydney.  For more information, please visit blackline.com. 

BlackLine Forward-looking Statements
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