Pinova buys Sematell from IMCap

Sematell was formerly known as Attensity Europe, a division of US-based Attensity Group. IMCap acquired the company in a carve-out in 2015, with the GP announcing the deal in a statement in January 2016. The company was established as an independent entity following the MBO and was subsequently rebranded as Sematell.

Sematell's sales tripled during the investment period to more than EUR 10m, while its headcount doubled to 70, according to a statement.

Pinova Capital invests in technology-backed SMEs in the DACH region, deploying equity tickets of EUR 10m-50m and focusing on businesses with revenues of EUR 10m-75m.

The GP held a final close for its second fund in 2017 on its EUR 180m hard-cap. As of March 2021, the GP was expected to make two further deals from the fund before launching Pinova III, according to Unquote Data.

Pinova said in a statement that it intends to support the company's expansion in Europe, beyond the DACH region.

Company
Sematell has developed ReplyOne, an AI-based contact centre response management software. ReplyOne assists contact centre employees with text-based customer service queries and is available in 70 languages. The company was established in 2000 as a spinout from the German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI). Its clients include Deutsche Telekom and Vodafone.

People
Sematell – Thomas Dreikauss (CEO).
Pinova Capital – Joern Pelzer (partner).
IMCap – Jens Weiss (partner).

Advisers
Vendor – Madison Park Group (M&A); PwC (legal); HSMV (tax).
Equity – Crowe BPG Beratungs- und Prüfungsgesellschaft (financial due diligence); Poellath (legal); Shearman & Sterling (legal); Taxess Steuerberatungsgesellschaft (tax); Telescope Advisory (technology due diligence); Consileon Business Consultancy (technology due diligence).

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• Topics
• Exits
• Buyouts
• DACH
• Technology
• Germany
• Secondary buyout
• Pinova Capital