Warburg Pincus buys minority stake in Softeon

Warehouse software vendor Softeon has sold a minority share of the company to the private equity firm Warburg Pincus LLC in a move to raise funds for a push to expand its sales and marketing teams, grow its geographical presence, and spark product innovation, the firm said today.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

However, Softeon said in a statement that this is the first investment the firm has ever received, with company President and Founder Gana Govind holding all the rest of the shares.

Reston, Virginia-based Softeon defines itself as a global supply chain software provider with a menu of products including warehouse management system (WMS), distributed order management (DOM), and warehouse execution system (WES) solutions. Softeon also provides an array of complementary supply chain capabilities including labor and resource management, store enablement, planning and network inventory management, 3PL billing, and freight audit.

"Softeon is an exciting opportunity for us given its differentiated supply chain solutions and strong customer base," Alex Berzofsky, managing director with Warburg Pincus, said in a release. "Warburg Pincus has a long-standing track record of investing in the logistics technology sector and we look forward to partnering with the Softeon team as they continue to expand."

That expansion is now planned to take place on several fronts, including a geographic push to bolster Softeon's European presence, Softeon Chief Marketing Officer Dan Gimore said in an email.

The company also plans to continue developing products to meet rising customer demand for "autonomous WMS operations" that require little to no human intervention. According to Gilmore, such a system could handle include an array of tasks, such as optimizing labor planning and assignment, providing detailed real-time visibility to processing status across areas the DC, reducing the gap between theoretic and actual DC throughput, maximizing material handling system utilization, and automatically releasing work.

Other recent investments in the logistics tech sector made by Warburg Pincus include a $255 million stake in freight broker BlueGrace Logistics LLC, $150 million in funding for Chinese warehouse robotics provider Geek+, and a lead role in raising a $35 million finance round for logistics technology provider Cargomatic Inc.

Our partnership with Warburg Pincus will accelerate such efforts and I am thrilled to see the company enter its next growth phase. https://t.co/A3PeRWkGpt

— Softeon (@Softeon) October 17, 2019