LONDON: Hg Capital Trust (Hg), a leading global software investor, announced an investment in AUVESY GmbH, a leading global provider of version control and change management software solutions for automated industrial environments.
As part of the transaction, the AUVESY management team will maintain a significant investment in the business whilst the former majority owner Brockhaus Private Equity has fully exited its position.
The terms of the transaction have not been disclosed and the transaction is subject to completion.
Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Germany, AUVESY is a provider of version control software for smart production machinery and other industrial Internet of Things (IoT) devices.
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AUVESY manages over 5 million industrial IoT devices across 45 countries, serving over 700 loyal customers.
Software developed by AUVESY enables its customers with automated production facilities and other smart machinery to automatically backup, secure and centralise their machine data and executable code. Customers also benefit from fully-featured change management, detailed change detection, easily comprehensible documentation, and a high degree of user-friendliness.
All machine level data is easy to backup and access when needed, simplifying maintenance, and freeing up time for optimising production processes. Downtime is significantly reduced, due to easy and reliable code management, trouble shooting and disaster recovery.
The AUVESY software product “versiondog” is in use across a wide range of sectors, including automotive, chemical, energy, food & beverage, pharma and utilities.
AUVESY is the first investment from the Hg Mercury 3 Fund and represents the 8th investment in Hg’s Automation & Engineering cluster focus, including the recently announced agreement with Trackunit.
The investment will support AUVESY’s position in a growing sector, which sits an important inflection point as shopfloors and industrial devices are getting increasingly digitalised, requiring version control solutions from a technical, cybersecurity, compliance and, for certain industries, even a regulatory perspective.
Dr. Tim Weckerle, CEO of AUVESY, said: “This is positive news for everyone at AUVESY and I thank all my colleagues who have worked so hard to get us to this very strong position. We are delighted to be partnering with a software expert in Hg. We see their operational experience and expertise in areas such as international sales, marketing and M&A being hugely beneficial to the future growth of the firm, all supporting our ‘Never Stand Still’ mission to ensure that our customers around the world experience less down time in their production.”
Benedikt Joeris, Director at Hg, said: “AUVESY is a highly innovative business, building a leading position in industrial IoT version control software globally. We see significant growth potential in this sector, both across new industry verticals and expansion into additional use cases. AUVESY is incredibly well positioned to benefit from this potential. Its excellent software enjoys high customer satisfaction and loyalty due to the efficiency increase and risk protection it provides.”
Markus Reithwiesner, an industry advisor at Hg and serving board member for several companies in the production and industry automation sector, will join AUVESY as Chairman: “Digitalisation at the shopfloor level is an increasing requirement across many sectors right now. As this trend continues, AUVESY is well positioned to enable customers to follow this trend. We see significant room to grow dynamically in the years ahead and look forward to working with the team.”
“As a technology investor focusing on high margin companies in innovation-driven markets, AUVESY was a perfect fit for our investment strategy when we acquired the company from its founders in 2017. After having supported the company in internationalisation by opening offices in the USA and in China, we see a prospering future for AUVESY” added Marco Brockhaus, founder and Managing Director of Brockhaus Private Equity.
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