Sumeru Equity closes third investment after Silver Lake spinout

  • Telesoft sells communications expense and mobility software
  • GP focuses on partnership approach with boot-strapped targets
  • Sumeru Equity Partners launched in 2014

 

Sumeru Equity Partners bought Telesoft, its third investment in a founder-owned, or self-funded company since the firm spun out of Silver Lake in 2014. Terms weren’t disclosed.

“We have a very strong partnership approach with founder-owned and bootstrapped businesses,” Sanjeet Mitra, managing director at Sumeru, said in a phone call.

He declined to provide any financial details on the Telesoft deal but said the company is seeing double-digit percentage growth in its business, with strong profitability.

Sumeru plans to boost the overseas business of Telesoft, a specialist in communications expense and mobility management software.

The firm was already familiar with Telesoft and moved to acquire it shortly after the company hired SunTrust Robinson Humphrey to explore options, Mitra said.

“We saw a good fit and we pushed aggressively to get it done in a format that accelerated the process,” Mitra said.

The technology pedigree of the firm’s executives at Oracle and Hewlett-Packard also helped them with the deal, he said.

Mitra declined to comment on any capital-raising efforts by the firm. In April, Sumeru disclosed $363 million in commitments and a target of $600 million for its first fund, Sumeru Equity Partners Fund LP.

Meanwhile, Sumeru in May took part in a $65 million investment in Buildium, a provider of cloud-based property-management software. In September 2015, the firm joined earlier backer Adams Street in making an undisclosed investment in Cybera, a provider of secure virtual application networks.

On the exit front, software company Talend went public in July at $18 a share, raising $94.5 million. The stock had risen to $26 a share as of Aug. 31.

Talend, which sells the Talend Data Fabric platform to help business customers integrate their data, is connected to Sumeru via John Brennan and Jason Babcoke. Both are managing directors who worked on the deal while at Silver Lake Sumeru. Silver Lake Sumeru invested in Talend in 2010.

All the founders of Sumeru Equity Partners previously worked at Silver Lake Sumeru, a middle-market tech firm at Silver Lake that raised $1.1 billion in its first and only fund.

One other Silver Lake Sumeru veteran, Holly Haynes, co-founded Luminate Partners, which disclosed a $200 million target for its first fund in a filing.

Action Item: Sumeru Equity Partners, http://www.sumeruequity.com/

Photo courtesy of ©iStock/Piero Malaer