Investment and acquisitions heat up ISV market in APAC

ISVs are hot property for private equity, venture capital and vendors

The market for Independent Software Vendors (ISVs) has been on a sustained growth trajectory for the past few years. In this piece we explore investment action across the region, and the role that software marketplaces play in the race to acquire fresh tech innovation.

The global ISV market is projected to expand by approximately $2.06 trillion from 2024 to 2028, reflecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of about 14.73%¹, driven by increasing demand for specialised software solutions across various industries.

North America continues to lead the global ISV market, followed by Europe and Asia-Pacific. However, rapid industrialisation and digitalisation in Malaysia, Indonesia, and India have the Asia-Pacific region tipped for the fastest growth of ISV deployments, heavily weighted toward cloud-based offerings.²

As a result, ISV businesses across the Asia Pacific region are racking up investment, and larger software houses are acquiring ISVs at a steady pace.

APAC ISV Dealmakers Roundup.

Fintech

Fintech ISVs continue to be hot property across the region, attracting serious investment action.

Indonesian start-up digital payments platform Xendit raised USD $300 million in 2022 while Julo raised $60 million in its Series B round, led by Credit Saison. Kredivo secured nearly $USD 300 million across its C and D rounds, attracting lead investors such as Japan’s Mizuho Bank.

Singapore-based Nium, a global payments platform, raised USD $200 million in its Series D and E rounds³, and India’s Razorpay has raised a staggering $742 million over 11 funding rounds.

In Australia, Airwallex raised $100 million, attracting investors like Square Peg and Salesforce Ventures⁴ and Zeller secured $50m AUD in a funding round led by US-based Spark Capital.⁵

E-Commerce and Retail

In Singapore, Anchanto has raised a total of US $27.2 million since opening its doors ten years ago, Malaysia’s StoreHub secured USD $13.5 million in its Series B, and Philippines-based Great Deals e-Commerce netted USD $42 million over two funding rounds.

B2B Industry Solutions

ISVs with solutions that address unique industry needs are also attracting investment.

Atlassian alumni and Dovetail founder Benjamin Humphrey took his Aussie user research software start up to Series A, closing just north of $70m from venture capital firm, Accel.⁶ Kiwi automotive parts management software, Partly, closed on NSD $37 million via investment from Square Peg Capital, Blackbird Ventures and Octopus Ventures.

Singapore’s micro-learning platform Gnowbe and supply chain ISV Tinvio, HR platform Sprout Solutions in the Philippines, and India’s B2B manufacturing solution Zetwerk, along with media tech ISV, Amagi are further examples of industry specialised ISVs backed by private equity and venture capital funds.

Mature providers acquire ISV innovation.

Large and mature software providers are challenged to constantly develop and release innovative new products. The ISV ecosystem provides rich ground for strategic acquisitions that can add value to their own platforms.

For example, after successfully scaling across global markets from its home base in New Zealand, Xero acquired cloud-based document and data capture company Hubdoc, Swedish e-invoicing infrastructure company Tickstar, Danish workforce management platform Planday, and Australian invoice lending platform Waddle.

Australia’s favourite unicorn Atlassian has also been snapping up innovative ISVs at a rapid rate. Its USD $2 billion acquisition spree started in 2017 when it picked up Trello for $425m. In late 2023, it closed on its deal to buy video messaging platform, Loom for a cool $975m.

Smaller ISV players picked up by Atlassian include early-stage start-up Halp, Brisbane based no-code/low-code player ThinkTilt, Swedish asset and configuration management company Mindville, Jira automation app Code Barrel, and Percept.AI.

US giant Autodesk, the leading industrial Computer Aided Design (CAD) platform acquired Aussie born Reekoh, an IoT data integration ISV it had partnered with for several years prior.⁷

Marketplaces are perfect for cherry picking.

Notably, several of the smaller ISVs now sitting in Atlassian’s corporate portfolio were popular apps and plug-ins on the Atlassian Marketplace.

This highlights how the big end of town is leveraging this strategy to spot fast growth potential within its own ecosystem.

Microsoft, AWS and other hyper-scale platform providers are also investing in building out ISV marketplaces, which can provide their ecosystem of ISVs with opportunity to access a global buying audience.

Vendor Marketplace Entry.

The journey to marketplace entry is one of many steps. Once there, it is a race to get offerings noticed, win customers and drive transactional revenue growth.

Crayon’s award-winning ISV Innovation Hub is a program that ensures our partners are successful with all the steps needed to qualify for marketplace entry. We provide services to get you there, and dedicated experts that can fuel your competitive engines for marketplace growth.

Over 1,400 ISV and SaaS businesses around the world have worked through our program to scale their offerings, find new buying audiences and achieve breakthrough revenue results. We’ve learned a lot about how to reduce the common challenges and barriers faced by ISV founders and their teams, and we can do the same for you.

Whether you are a start-up, scale up or a mature ISV looking to build increased business value, the ISV Innovation Hub is an ideal place to get your journey to marketplace value underway.

¹ https://markwideresearch.com/independent-software-vendors-isvs-market/

² https://newsroom.technavio.org/independent-software-vendors-market-analysis

³ Nium Raises US$50 Million in Series E Round to Expand Real-Time Payments Global Infrastructure

⁴ https://www.fintechaustralia.org.au/newsroom/airwallex-raises-200m-at-a-4b-valuation-to-double-down-on-business-banking

⁵ Payments fintech Zeller now a unicorn after closing $100 million funding round (businessnewsaustralia.com)

⁶ https://afr.com/technology/dovetail-confirms-960m-valuation-in-bubble-like-environment-20220118-p59p4x

⁷ https://www.afr.com/technology/this-big-money-play-is-just-the-start-of-a-tech-m-and-a-wave-20231108-p5eiiz