Thursday, October 10, 2024

Vendor Panel and Unimarket merge to create another potential home run for VC in Australia




Procurement  platforms VendorPanel and Unimarket  (backed by Accel-KKR) have merged - chalking up another win for our Australian  VC and Startup ecosystem


The merged entity serves over 450 organisations  in sectors such as corporate, education, healthcare, government, energy, facility management, transport, and utilities.

The opportunity 


Previous Moneys raised  

  • Vendor Panel raised $5m in 2 rounds with EVP’s Justin Lipman and Micro Equities Leigh Jasper being some of the investors . 
  • Unimarket - unknown -  but seems to be well backed by KKR 

The backstory of Leigh Jaspers investment in Vendor Panel 


Mr Leathem became connected with Mr Jasper when he was hiring VendorPanel’s chief marketing officer, Frank Carron, who previously worked for Aconex.

Once Leigh understood the opportunity not only endorsed Mr Carron, but asked if he could buy into the business! 


The players

  • Phil Kenney, CEO of Unimarket
  • James Leathem, CEO of VendorPanel 
  • Phil Cunningham, Managing Director at Accel-KKR. "With their combined capabilities, these two companies are now poised to capitalize on global growth opportunities, delivering unmatched value to their customers while driving innovation and performance improvements across the source-to-pay ecosystem."
  • Unimarket is a NZ company founded in 2005 by Damien Hollis and Scott Blackwood and backed by KKR 


The opportunity 

According to Spend Network, global procurement is estimated to be $13 trillion USD annually, highlighting the critical need for optimization.


Not much is known yet about the value of the deal , but no doubt this could well be the making me of a home run! 



Details here: 


https://lnkd.in/gzvtN_RNv


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Justin Lipman s post


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