In Its time to cheer up for the start-up technology companies. Entrepreneurs can look at a new horizon for consumer reach-out with the recent announcement from SAP Ventures to raised $650 million for its second direct investment fund, SAP Ventures Fund II. That will supplement a $405 million fund of funds that is aimed at investing in other venture capital firms around the world.SAP Ventures Fund II will typically invest between $5m and $20m in growth-stage technology companies.
This gives customers an unparalleled access to one of the global ecosystems of enterprise customers and partners.
The goal is to give entrepreneurs and startups access to multiple strategic revenue channels available through SAP Ventures limited partner, SAP AG, which counts more than 13,000 partners and 248,000 customers around the world.
The parent company has made its mark in critical ERP systems that large organisations use. But in recent years, its real-time analytics database, HANA has been positioned to encourage startups to use the technology.
With larger players like SAP bringing the customer-base under singular platform enterprises can selectively and effectively spread their wings into international territories and exploit untapped markets. This is especially a big boon for startups who will have to spend very little resources hunting for potential leads and can concentrate on innovation & delivery. This move by SAP is definitely a game changer & will change the marketplace ecosystem.
We believe that we represent a new breed of venture capital funds. We are in a unique position of being independent and yet having unparalleled access to one of the worlds largest global ecosystems of enterprise customers and partners, said Nino Marakovic, CEO and managing director, SAP Ventures.
Byju Joesph, VP-IT, Generalli Future Generali India Life Insurance says, Technology start-ups in manufacturing can be encouraged with this announcement. Business Process Management (BPM) is one area where start-ups can focus on to aligning the organization's business processes with the wants and needs of clients. The systematic approach in BPM should be an attempt to start ups should make to continuously improve business value and competence while striving for technological innovation, flexibility.
To execute on its strategy, SAP Ventures is building out a dedicated, 10-person internal business development team located in the U.S., Europe and Asia doubling the firms overall staff and bringing the ratio of investors to service-oriented staff to 1:1. This team will work closely with portfolio companies to connect with customers, go-to-market partners and technology and industry experts in the enterprise ecosystem that can help them accelerate growth, scale and success.
Dhananjay C Rokde, Global Head Information Security, Cox&Kings says, SAP has a clear focus and has raised the right amount of capital for acquiring the precise companies in their prime stages. What is most interesting here is that SAP is investing on companies that are customer-facing or consumer-intrinsic. It is very evident that SAP wants to start touching its buyer. With an existing powerful & versatile platform such as HANA; SAP can look to leap into a new innovation power-drive with the newly obtained intellectual properties.
SAP Ventures has seen record results this year, with 12 initial public offering (IPO) and merger and acquisition (M&A) events to date in 2013. Five of its portfolio companies went public, includingControl 4,Just Dial,Marin Software,Tremor VideoandViolin Memory. Seven of its portfolio companies were acquired, includingAepona,Apriso,Datria,ExactTarget,Ignite,ScaleIOandVoxeo.
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