As we approach the halfway of Q3, there is plenty of activity happening in the mergers and acquisitions department in the startup space across the globe.
Siemens acquires Mendix
In this regard, German-based Siemens has inked a successful deal to acquire Rotterdam software manufacturer Mendix for € 628 million ($730 million), which reportedly makes it one of the largest acquisition of a Dutch growth company.
In fact, Siemens has unanimously agreed to pay the acquisition in cash and in addition to it, the German company has also promised to invest a significant amount in Mendix for developing purpose.
Talking about the acquisition, Mendix CEO, Derek Roos, said, ” By becoming a part of Siemens, we will be able to access an even bigger investment than going public, and we will immediately get access to an enormous global infrastructure that would take much longer to stand-up ourselves. We are committed to extending our leadership in low-code and will significantly accelerate investments in R&D, Customer Success and global expansion.”
Founded by Derckjan Kruit and Derek Roos in the Netherlands in 2005, Mendix sells software that enables companies to build apps and websites faster, easier and intuitive with the use of visual models.
Employs around 400 people
More than 4,000 forward-thinking enterprises, including KLM, Philips, Royal DSM and University of Pennsylvania use the platform to build business applications and to improve operational efficiency. At present the company employs around 400 people and its software-as-a-service business model results in over 90 percent of sales being recurring.
Entire team retained
Headquartered in Boston currently, the company will continue to operate with its name and as a segment within Siemens’ Digital Factory Division. The entire team will be retained and operate as it does today, whereas, the CEO of Mendix, will now report to Tony Hemmelgarn, CEO of Siemens PLM. Furthermore, Mendix will accelerate Siemens’ current cloud, IoT, and Digital Enterprise software capabilities.
Mendix road to acquisition!
Reiterating the Mendix’s journey, the Rotterdam company received their initial funding around € 250,000 from the Amsterdam fund henQ Capital, which later increased to € 1.4m.
Later in 2012, the Mendix received around € 13 million, for the largest part of the Dutch investment fund Prime and in 2014 the company got around € 25 million from the American fund Battery Ventures as well. Moreover, the company had a turnover of € 29 million, against € 22 million a year earlier.
Mendix was named a leader in the Gartner “2018 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise High Productivity Application Platform as a Service”, placing furthest for completeness of vision for the second consecutive year and a leader in the Gartner “2018 Magic Quadrant for Mobile App Development Platforms” for the second consecutive year.
Boosts software capability on the global level
For Siemens, this acquisition will continue to boosts its software capability on the global level. Meanwhile, the German company has invested more than $10 billion to acquire and expand software businesses over the past decade to build its connected devices platform.
“We acquire mendix to extend our leading position in digitalizing the industrial world, which is a cornerstone of our Vision 2020+”, said Klaus Helmrich, member of the Managing Board of Siemens AG. “Mendix is a leader in the rapidly expanding low-code segment and their platform will help our customers to adopt MindSphere even faster by accelerating cloud-based application development for the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)”, he added.
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