B2B News For Tuesday, April 19th, 2022: Acquisitions, Appointments And A Blended Finance Event

With the holiday weekend behind us, there were several acquisitions announced, several appointments made and there is a hashtag you will be wanting to follow on social media today.

Versapay, a leader in Collaborative Accounts Receivable, announced yesterday it has completed its acquisition of U.S.-based fintech company DadeSystems. This acquisition broadens Versapay’s suite of accounts receivable (AR) automation solutions and expands its AI and machine learning capabilities. It will allow the company to increase its enterprise and mid-market footprint. DadeSystems has already been a longtime partner of Versapay and is already embedded in Versapay’s cloud-based automated AR platform. This acquisition allows all of the DadeSystems solutions including mobile offerings to be offered to Versapay’s clients and partners.

Deloitte Canada announced this morning that it is acquiring MDB Insight Inc. to bolster its Economic Advisory talent and leadership, and expand its existing offerings for its public sector and mid-market clients post-pandemic. Backed by more than 15 years of experience, MDB Insight combines integrated expertise in economic and workforce development with innovative tools and research methods to deliver actionable solutions and help organizations overcome both business and policy challenges.

“MDB Insight is a powerhouse in economic and workforce development, corporate strategy, and market research, championed by a diverse team of experienced leaders,” said Anthony Viel, CEO, of Deloitte Canada. “It’s clear the MDB Insight team is a highly valuable addition to our firm, especially when considering the need to rebuild our local and provincial economies post-pandemic, and their experience and relationships with the public sector and municipal clients.” This acquisition strengthens its position as the leading economic advisory firm in Canada and allows its clients to benefit from increasingly comprehensive economic and policy capabilities.

Hightouch, a leader in Data Activation, today announced it acquired Workbase, a workflow automation startup that helps RevOps teams build workflows on top of data warehouses like Snowflake.

By this joining of forces, it reflects how companies with bottoms-up adoption strategies, like Product-Led Sales, increasingly rely on deep, domain-specific connections between data warehouses and their customer relationship management (CRM) tools.

Hightouch made the acquisition for the team’s expertise and technical depth. “The Workbase team comes with a tremendous wealth of knowledge from the customers they’ve been able to instrument in Product-Led Sales,” said Kashish Gupta, Co-Founder, and Co-CEO.

“HighTouch is committed to building a platform that customers love, and this is something we often heard first-hand in the market. Their vision is very much aligned with ours, and we’re excited to build together on this journey,” said John Tan, Co-Founder, and CEO at Workbase.

Ara Partners (“Ara”), a private equity firm that specializes in industrial decarbonization investments, has promoted Katy Boettcher to Principal and hired Ken Nguyen as a Senior Associate.

Polly (formerly known as DealerPolicy), the leading insurance marketplace for automotive retail, has named Tom Lyons as the company’s President and Chief Operating Officer of Insurance. Effective today, Lyons reports directly to Travis Fitzgerald, Co-Founder and CEO at Polly.

Across the world’s 46 least developed countries (LDCs), accessing capital is particularly difficult due to underdeveloped domestic financial infrastructure and foreign investors’ perceptions that they are too high-risk. Significantly more private capital is needed for developing countries to stimulate their economies and meet the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Blended finance, an investment model that combines development, donor, and private capital, is an innovative means of increasing investment in developing countries and boosting private-sector contributions. Since 2015, blended finance transactions have averaged roughly $9 billion per year and contributed to a range of projects, but much more is needed to close the investment gap. How are public and private sector stakeholders working together to deploy capital and support business development across LDCs, and what more needs to be done?

Join FP, in partnership with Microsoft, today, April 19, for a conversation exploring the uses of blended finance, and the ways that the public and private sectors can collaborate to deploy capital more efficiently and effectively.

You can follow the conversation by following the #BlendedFin4LDCs hashtag on social media today or you can visit their website if you want more information.