Australia’s Five V exits Totara to trade buyer
Australia’s Five V Capital has sold its majority position in employee management software provider Totara to London-based growth equity investor Tenzing for an undisclosed sum.
Five V acquired Totara for about USD 34.2m in June 2020, according to AVCJ Research. Tenzing targets companies valued in a range of GBP 10m-GBP 200m (USD 12.5m-USD 243m). The operations and management of Totara will remain unchanged.
Totara scaled rapidly during Five V’s holding period, with the private equity firm claiming it saw 30% growth a year on average. The New Zealand-founded company moved its headquarters to the UK and entered the US; there are now more than 100 staff across the three countries.
Totara founder Richard Wyles said the company had tripled in size in the past few years. “Partnering with the Five V team has been invaluable, their dedication, support, and insights have played a pivotal role in driving our growth,” he said in a statement.
Totara is now positioned as a global leader in supplying learning management system software to enterprises. The product suite, which covers engagement and performance management, aims to create high-performance workplaces by transforming how organisations understand, measure, and improve talent development.
The company stresses its differentiation in tailored services and configurable technology architecture. This is said to allow customers to adapt the software to fit unique needs, systems and workflows, as well as suit the purposes of regulated industries such as government and healthcare. Carl Lavin, investment lead at Tenzing, described the offering as “unique.”
The core product is a platform called TXP that supports a user base of 20m people across 140 countries. TXP’s functionality spans compliance training, social learning, and personalised plans for learning and development. It is used by organisations such as the UK’s National Health Service, the US Department of Agriculture, Sony, Toyota, and Amazon Alexa.
Five V invests across stages and sectors with a view to scaling businesses beyond Australasia through flexible capital and strategic support including technology enablement. It closed its fourth flagship fund on AUD 550m (USD 348m) in 2021. Assets under management amount to more than AUD 1.5bn.
The firm launched a New Zealand office last August and confirmed three hires for the country team. Murrah Schnuriger, a partner at PwC New Zealand from 1994 to April 2023, will be the country head.
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