VCs to exit New Zealand-based software developer

Compensation includes $192.5 million in cash and subordinate voting shares in Lightspeed worth $157.5 million. Lightspeed has framed the transaction as part of an Asia Pacific expansion, doubling its customer base in the region.

Vend has raised more than $45 million in private funding, including a $9 million round in late 2016 from the likes of Square Peg Capital, Larsen Ventures, Movac Partners, and Valar Ventures, set up by PayPal co-founder and early Facebook investor Peter Thiel. Previous investors include Point 9 Capital and Milford Asset Management.

Vend brands itself as a user-friendly point-of-sale (POS) software provider, specializing in interfaces that work seamlessly with existing or new hardware. Lightspeed described the company as “widely acknowledged as providing one of the foremost retail products on the market.”

The company provides about 20,000 retailers globally with a cloud-based product cataloging platform that helps manage inventory across multiple outlets using 24-hour access to real-time data. Additional services include tools for automating reordering, printing labels and barcodes, and a scanner app for stocktaking.

Vend generated revenue of about $34 million and gross transaction volume of at least $7 billion during calendar 2020, according to a statement. Square Peg said the company had grown its revenue by more than 20x since its first investment in 2013.

“At the ecosystem level, this is a tremendous day for New Zealand tech,” Barry Brott, a co-founder at Square Peg, said. “Standing on the shoulders of giants – Xero, Trademe and many others – this is further proof that globally significant companies are built in NZ.”

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• Topics
• Australasia
• Trade sale
• Consumer
• New Zealand
• Square Peg Capital
• Valar Ventures
• enterprise software
• Financial Services