BV Investment Partners hits Fund XI’s target, eyes hard-cap

BV Investment Partners secured $1.46 billion for an 11th flagship offering, effectively reaching the fund’s target.

The firm earlier this month reported the amount raised by BV Investment Partners Fund XI in Form D documents. At its present size, the vehicle is only a few million dollars short of a $1.5 billion target, reported last year by Buyouts. Evercore is the placement agent.

Fund XI is already the largest capital pool in BV’s history, surpassing by 33 percent its predecessor, wrapped up in 2020 at $1.1 billion. The new flagship is expected to continue fundraising with an eye toward meeting its $1.75 billion hard-cap.

In a clear sign that things are tough in private equity fundraising, GPs in the first quarter logged a record amount of time on the road. Sponsors took an average of 13.4 months to close their funds, well above annual averages stretching back to the financial crisis, according to Buyouts data.

While timelines are running longer due to tight supply conditions, the experience of individual offerings can vary widely, with some funds raising capital for more than two years, and some others, for only a few months. BV’s Fund XI appears to have been in the market for roughly a year.

BV was founded in 1983 as Boston Ventures. Rebranded in 2011 after a succession event, its principal owner today is CEO and managing partner Vikrant Raina, the firm’s ADV filings said. Raina joined in 1999 from Goldman Sachs Asia’s communications, media and tech group, where he was an executive director.

The strategy focuses on acquiring control and minority stakes in North American mid-market companies with EBITDA of $5 million to $20 million and operating in tech-enabled business services, software and IT services sectors. Targeting family and founder-owned establishments where it is often a first institutional capital source, BV typically invests a minimum of $40 million.

BV reports backing 117 platform companies across 10 funds. Its latest platform investment, announced in December, is Imagenet, a provider of back-office support tech and tech-enabled outsourced services to healthcare plans. Imagenet is the inaugural deal of Fund XI, according to the firm’s website.

Along with doing new deals, BV was last year exiting portfolio assets. Among them was RafterOne, a provider of multi-cloud commerce solutions on the Salesforce platform, sold to NYSE-listed Interpublic Group of Companies. BV first invested in RafterOne in December 2020.

Raina oversees a Boston-based team of more than 30 professionals, including managing partners Justin Harrison and Matt Kinsey.

BV declined to provide a comment on this story.