Software businesses in the Benelux region have grown more successful over the past ten years, due to the shift to scalable SaaS business models and associated recurring revenue streams. A demonstration of this trend was made at the Main Software 50 Benelux event that was held in Utrecht last Thursday, November 17.
For the 11th consecutive year, Main Capital Partners prepares the list of the top 50 software businesses – this year for the first time includes the whole Benelux area. With the Main Software 50 awards, Main honours and recognises the rising talents in the software industry.
Top of the list is Belgian software provider UgenTec, which offers clinical laboratories PCR workflow and analysis standardisation solutions.
Brief about Main Capital Partners
Main is a strategic investor that focuses on enterprise software companies in the Benelux, DACH and Nordics regions. Currently, it has €2.2B in assets under management for investments in mature, profitable and growing product software companies that disrupt markets and trigger change.
Since 2003, Main has supported and closely collaborated with its portfolio companies to realise their full potential, focusing on sustainable growth through strategic product-market positioning and selective buy-and-build, partnerships and internationalisation strategies.
Growth in the Benelux software industry
The Main Software 50 lists the top prosperous Benelux software firms. Compared to barely 50 per cent a decade ago, 90 per cent of the Main Software 50 businesses now have an EBITDA margin of more than 10 per cent. The ranking was initially released in 2012 to draw attention to the significant but frequently unreported enterprise software sector.
Despite the current state of the economy, which is marked by inflation and resource shortages, the software sector is stable and will expand at a steady rate of 25 per cent in 2022, according to a statement from Main Capital Partners.
Main Capital Partners ranks the many businesses that join up every year using seven objective financial indicators: revenue, revenue growth, profitability, revenue from Cloud/SaaS services, recurring revenue, international revenue, and revenue from partner channels. Independent research firm Dialogic independently verifies the findings.
Bram Kaashoek, Managing Partner Market Intelligence & Performance Excellence, says, “With the event, we want to show that both the Dutch and Belgian software sector is a healthy and prosperous industries. This is essential because a healthy software industry contributes greatly to competitiveness and thus strengthens the resilience of the economy in the Benelux.”
As per the ranking, the software landscape in the Benelux has shown significant growth in recurring revenue, despite the unstable economic situation. The share of recurring revenue rose from 54 per cent in 2013 to 81 per cent in 2021. Furthermore, the software companies in the ranking have also become more productive. In 2022 they achieved an average turnover of 128k per FTE. The average has grown by 2.0 percent per year for the past ten years.
Overall champions 2022: UgenTec, Plauti and Liquit
At the ceremony, five awards were given out: the Overall Champions Awards for the top 3 in the ranking, the Highest Growth Award for the company with the highest revenue growth and the Main Accelerator Award for the most promising emerging company.
UgenTec, a software supplier of PCR workflow and analysis standardised solutions for the healthcare industry, won the title of 1st Overall Champion this year and entered the competition.
Plauti, a provider of data management solutions for the Sales Force platform, received second place. The corporation is rising from the sixth year compared to last year with this profit.
Liquit, a software provider that offers options for digital workspaces so that individuals may simply work anywhere, anytime, was given third place.
The Main accelerator Award and Highest Growth Award
This year’s Main Accelerator Award went to Accurat, a data-driven software firm based in Belgium that gathers and analyses GDPR data for merchants. Accurat is taking part in the list for the first time this season.
The winner of the Highest Growth Award, a company that has achieved the highest sales growth, went to the Dutch QR-order platform Jamezz. The company was able to achieve a 900 per cent increase in turnover as the demand for Covid-regulated ordering and home delivery grew. The firm, which provides catering services to more than 2,000 organisations in the Netherlands alone, leads the Benelux market for self-ordering and aspires to dominate the European industry in five years.
Here are the startups from Amsterdam in this list
According to the Main Software 50 edition 2022, six startups are included from the capital city of the Netherlands. These include:
Textkernel: Founded in 2001, Textkernel claims to be the international leader in Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning and Semantic Technology for matching people and jobs. The company enables thousands of recruitment & staffing agencies, employers, job boards, HR software vendors and outplacement & redeployment agencies to work smarter by creating efficiencies in the HR and recruitment process.
WoodWing: Founded in 2000, WoodWing says it is in the business of creating “world-class” content and information management solutions. The company’s flagship solutions – WoodWing Studio and WoodWing Assets – assist publishers in eliminating inefficiencies in the creative process so they can concentrate their efforts on strategy, storytelling, and differentiating themselves from the competition.
Klippa: Founded in 2015, Klippa offers data & AI consulting and AI-powered SaaS solutions for automating administrative tasks and workflows based on documents and images. The company also offers solutions for scanning, expense management, invoice processing, KYC, loyalty, logistics, and back-office automation. These solutions are available as an end to end solutions, but also as RPA components, APIs and SDKs.
OSRE: Founded in 2012, OSRE (Online Software for Real Estate) develops solutions to streamline the process of renting or selling real estate. OSRE offers both software and marketing products with an aim to digitise the real estate transaction and optimise the sales or rental process. In the field of software, there is a CRM System for new construction projects and for individual rental. And for digital marketing products, the company offers standardised projects and websites built in WordPress, home and office searchers and digital campaigns via social media, display campaigns and google.
Zenz Technologies: Founded in 2013, Zenz Technologies aims to become a leading provider of decision support systems for the airline business and related industries.
Validata Group: Founded in 2009, Validata is an innovative global technology company that has specialised in background screenings. The company offers background checks for financial, retail, healthcare and business sectors amongst others, and helps clients to make better informed hiring decisions. Validata has conducted more than 200,000 screenings worldwide.
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