Category: Deals

Article CF News by R.L. Published on 6 Oct 2021 at 17:11

Founded in 2015, Addworking had only raised around €1.5m through two rounds of funding. The publisher of a platform for managing freelancerhas now raised nearly €6m, following a process led by Cambon Partners. It is iXO Private Equity, a fund based in Toulouse, Marseille, Bordeaux and Lyon (see below), which takes the lead in this new operation, by investing a ticket of €2.9M in the Savoyard company, managed by Julien Pérona and Charles Liénart. Edenred Capital Partners, present since the seed round in 2017, as well as the Seed4Soft entrepreneurs’ club and Club Holnest, launched by Holnest, Jean-Michel Aulas’ FO, complete the operation. The latter would also include a bit of secondary, with the purchase of some business angels.

Annual growth to double

As a reminder, Addworking has built up experience in connecting companies with subcontractors, service providers and freelancers. The platform, sold on a Saas model, aims to facilitate the creation and distribution of job offers in various sectors such as construction, transport, logistics, IT services and industry. It also handles the management and publication of contracts and the processing of invoices. The Savoy-based publisher, which is keeping quiet about the new features that should enrich its solution, claims nearly 2,500 customers, including mainly SMEs and large groups. Addworking is not very forthcoming about its turnover, but it has doubled its annual growth in recent years. With a staff of nearly 25, the company is expected to double its workforce by the end of the year.

The stakeholders in the ADDWORKING transaction

Target company : ADDWORKING

Buyer or Investor: IXO PRIVATE EQUITY, Nicolas Iordanov , EDENRED CAPITAL PARTNERS, SEED4SOFT, CLUB HOLNEST

Buyers’ Corporate lawyer: VIGUIE SCHMIDT & ASSOCIES (EX SLVF), Louis Chenard

Company Investment Banker / M&A Advisor: CAMBON PARTNERS, Romain Dehaussy , Robin Beaudot

Corporate Law Firm: JOFFE & ASSOCIES, Virginie Belle, Antoine Lamy

ATICLE CFNEWS BY R.L. Published on Oct. 5, 2021 at 16:32, updated on Oct. 5, 2021 at 19:15

Since September, French investors have been showing a strong interest in corporate catering as seen in the Frenchtech ecosystem. Foodles, a corporate catering service and connected fridges, recently raised €31 million (see below). One of its young competitors, I-Lunch, specialised in online ordering and delivery of meals for companies, created in 2017 by serial entrepreneur Victoria Benhaim, raised just over €4 million for its first round. A series A round in which the Banque des Territoires de la Caisse des Dépôts participated, following a process led by the fundraising consultancy Paris Business Consulting. The Paris Région Venture Fund, managed by Karista, as well as Financière Tuileries, Guy Rico’s family office, and the service company Noveo, which entered directly, complete the package.

10 M€ of targeted revenues in 2022

The 40-Parisian startup offers several digital catering services tailored to different company sizes, such as online delivery of meals for employees on the Btob ordering platform. For large groups, I-lunch offers services such as the creation of catering facilities, on-site cafeterias, in particular to ensure the sale of meals, or the installation of connected fridges. The start-up has 60 clients, including Thales, L’Oréal, Total and Geodis, and expects to generate just under €5 million in revenues in the current financial year. Victoria Benhaim explains about this company: “We operate like a classic corporate restaurant. For each of our clients, we charge them a subscription fee, the amount of which differs according to the offer chosen. In addition, the guest pays directly on the platform or in cafeterias his meal which is partly subsidised by the company”. I-Lunch’s ambition is now to exceed €10 million in sales by 2022, including the opening of its platform in two major cities in France, kept secret for the moment, and the doubling of its workforce. Other projects could be announced in the second half of next year.

The stakeholders of the I-LUNCH operation

Target company: I-LUNCH
Buyer or Investor : BANQUE DES TERRITOIRES, Christophe Genter , KARISTA (EX CAPDECISIF MANAGEMENT), Benjamin Zerbib , Yvan-Michel Ehkirch , FINANCIERE TUILERIES DEVELOPPEMENT, NOVEO GROUP
Law Firm and its corporate lawyers: JOFFE & ASSOCIES, Thomas Saltiel, Johann Mendez
Fund raising Consulting / Agent : PARIS BUSINESS CONSULTING, Noameine Piron

ARTICLE PUBLISHED IN LES ECHOS By Camille Wong on 28 Sep 2021 at 7:00amTimed on 28 Sep 2021 at 9:05am

French people are rushing to second homes. In 2020, there were 3.6 million second homes, according to Insee. A record. It is in this favorable context that the start-up Prello has just launched, pushed by a fundraising of 1.75 million euros from business angels and the fund Axeleo Capital.

“It’s a trend that’s been going on for several years, and which has accelerated with the health crisis, the rise of nomadism and the boom in teleworking,” says Ludovic de Jouvancourt, the founder of the start-up with Sébastien Gal. In concrete terms, Prello offers to buy a second home for up to eight people. They can be complete strangers that the start-up will recruit for you or friends who want to invest together.

“Smart calendar”

They are grouped together in an SCI (Société civile immobilière) and each owns one eighth of a house, or even more if the same person buys more shares. Each share is equivalent to 44 nights of occupancy.

This is the average time spent in second homes,” says the entrepreneur, who is also a real estate investor. Knowing that the average investment of each co-owner is 200,000 euros, if we manage to aggregate eight people, the value of the house is around 1.6 million euros.” In other words, a very nice house.

The start-up ensures equality between co-owners thanks to a “smart calendar”. Everyone benefits from both “classic” and “tense” nights (Bank Holidays, August, Christmas, New Year’s). The company is remunerated up to 8% on the value of the house, including the price of the property but also the renovation work and the furnishings that it takes care of.

Turnkey

The start-up is developing two acquisition models: connecting buyers with a real estate agency, or buying properties itself and reselling the shares. It is planning to raise debt to finance the acquisition of properties that will be put up for sale in the fourth quarter of 2021.

The start-up then takes care of the maintenance (cleaning, gardening, etc.), billed at cost price, and administrative tasks. It also provides assistance with financing through partnerships with a broker and banks. The service is designed to be “turnkey” and requires a monthly subscription of 99 euros per month from each co-owner.

Prello is not the only one to launch itself on this niche. French start-up Altacasa announced its arrival last week with a €2 million fundraising round. On the other side of the Atlantic, Pacaso launched in 2020 and became a unicorn within five months. “A lot of startups have tackled the primary residence and rental investment market. The second home had remained a poor relation. The dynamics around improving the quality of life helped put it back in the center of the game,” analyses the entrepreneur, who plans to recruit a dozen employees by the end of the year to expand his team of eight people.

La PME bretonne Coriolis Composites veut surfer sur l’utilisation croissante de panneaux en matériaux composites dans l’aéronautique, l’automobile et les énergies renouvelables.
Concevant des équipements et des logiciels utilisés dans la fabrication de telles structures, elle convie ACE Management (qui lui avait déjà livré des OC dans le passé) et Bpifrance – lesquels misent ensemble 15 M€ dans le cadre d’un OBO.
Leur arrivée entraîne la sortie de personnes physiques et le retrait partiel de Société Financière Lorient Développement.
La fondatrice et son mari demeurent « actionnaires de référence ». Pour 2015, Coriolis Composites table sur 20 M€ de chiffre d’affaires, dont 80 % à l’étranger. Et elle ne compte pas s’en tenir là. « Le recours aux matériaux composites dans les avions et les voitures permet de limiter la consommation en carburant, selon
Pierre Morisseau, chez ACE Management. Ces structures sont, par exemple, utilisées dans les dernières générations d’Airbus 350 et de Boeing 787. Mais aussi par des constructeurs automobiles haut de gamme tels que BMW. »
Des applications dans les pales d’hydroliennes constituent aussi des débouchés de développement.

Conseil juridique (investisseurs): Christophe Joffe, Virginie Belle

Co-fondé par quatre personnes en 2007, ConvictionsRH s’était jusque-là développé grâce à l’association de nouveaux managers. Désirant franchir un nouveau palier, le conseil en ressources humaines fait ses premiers pas dans le microcosme du private equity : il offre une minorité de ses parts à Bpifrance et à Rives Croissance, en échange d’un investissement total compris entre 3 et M€. En parallèle, il s’initie au levier avec la levée d’une dette senior apportée par Banque Populaire Rive de Paris et Caisse d’Epargne Ile-de-France.
Cet OBO permet d’associer au capital trois nouveaux cadres – désormais au nombre de 9.
Ensemble, ils comptent alimenter la croissance des revenus du groupe, qui a bondi l’an dernier de 35 %, à 17 M€.
Fort de 140 collaborateurs, il dispose de trois bureaux en France et de deux implantations au Royaume-Uni et au Portugal.
De nouvelles ouvertures devraient intervenir à l’international.

Conseil juridique cible : Joffe & Associes (Romain Soiroin, Aymeric Dégremont)

Concurrent direct de Reezocar (3 M€ levés en septembre 2016), de La Centrale ou encore de Carizy (1 M€ réuni en juin 2016), Kyump ambitionne de devenir le numéro 1 du marché de la voiture d’occasion en France. Pour cela, la peer-to-peer marketplace vient de boucler un premier tour de financement de 2,4 M€, dont une grande majorité en fonds propres apportés par Breega Capital, Kima Ventures, 123 IM, et deux business angels (Yannis Yahiaoui, co-fondateur d’Adotmob, et Eduardo Ronzano, co-fondateur de KelDoc).

Actif à Paris, Lyon, Nantes et Rouen, Kyump facilite près d’une centaine de transactions mensuelles. L’an prochain, il souhaite s’implanter dans une nouvelle région par mois, tout en triplant son chiffre d’affaires. Kyump compte également poursuivre en parallèle la montée en gamme de son service, notamment par l’amélioration de son algorithme, et par la création d’un nouveau site. A ce jour, les véhicules passant par sa plateforme sont déjà inspectés et remis sous garantie, pour une durée de 6 mois. Le marché tricolore de la voiture d’occasion a progressé de 1 %, en 2016, à plus de 5,6 millions de voitures.

Conseil juridique investisseurs : Joffe & Associes (Thomas Saltiel, Charlotte Viandaz)

Comment doper la vitesse de circulation des données des réseaux locaux de fibre optique, sans procéder à un couteux recâblage ? CAILabs, un spin-off du Laboratoire Kastler Brossel né il y a 4 ans, a développé une technologie de traitement des faisceaux lumineux contenue dans un boîtier « Aroona » permettant un traitement des données jusqu’à 400 fois plus rapide.
Pour continuer d’alimenter sa croissance (qui s’élève à 160 % sur l’exercice 2016), CAILabs scelle un troisième tour de table de 5 M€ en s’ouvrant à Safran Corporate Ventures. Innovacom et Starquest Capital, qui avaient déjà apporté 3,6 M€ à la jeune pépite de l’optique, en profitent aussi pour réinvestir.
Onze collaborateurs devraient prochainement rejoindre les équipes de CAILabs (forte de 24 salariés à ce jour), afin d’accélérer le développement industriel et commercial. Pour l’heure, « Aroona » a séduit Huawei, IBM, ou encore Nokia ; en 2017, il a même fait ses premiers pas hors des télécommunications via un partenariat d’intégration avec des acteurs industriels en lithographie (fabrication de puces électroniques), fabrication additive et soudure laser.
«CAILabs peut tabler sur une très forte croissance d’ici 2020, précise Eric Dalbiès, directeur de la stratégie et du M&A de Safran, et président de Safran Corporate Ventures.
Au-delà de la priorité que représentent pour l’entreprise les télécoms terrestres, il y a des opportunités très fortes autour de certains grands métiers de Safran, notamment dans le câblage aéronautique ou autour de l’utilisation de lasers industriels ». En marge de cette diversification sectorielle, la jeune pousse bretonne va participer au programme Impact USA pour étudier le marché outre-Atlantique pendant une dizaine de semaines, et pourquoi pas s’y implanter dans la foulée.

Conseil cible : juridique: Joffe & Associes (Thomas Saltiel et Camille Malbezin)