Australia and Oceania: Top 7 investors in Information Services Industry’s Early Funding

Intro

In the modern world, where the amounts of information created and exchanged increase daily, the demand for different products of the Information Services industry, like cloud computing, information management, and IT consulting & outsourcing, grows at a relatively high speed. According to The Business Research Company, the market will climb from $136.46B in 2020 to $147.04B in 2021, representing a CAGR of 7.7% as companies worldwide are recovering from the pandemic impact. Further predictions assume that the growth rate will be even higher, 8%, with the market reaching $196.7B by 2025.
The industry still attracts a lot of finances, including those which come from venture capital firms and corporate investors. Some investors, such as those dealing with private equity, are even reported as having a “ravenous appetite” for putting money into IT services firms. In Australia and Oceania, for instance, early funding rounds connected to Information Services startups accounted for a 4% share of all early stages in the region over the last three years. Top 7 investors, featured on the diagram below, performed one round each, together making up 7 rounds of early fundings.

Australia and Oceania: Top 7 investors in Information Services Industry’s Early Funding
data provided by Unicorn Nest

Key takeaways

• Funds Geography – All 7 top VCs are based in Australia. The city of Sydney is home to 4 of them; other typical locations are Melbourne and Paddington. The inclination is for the funds to invest in the country of their establishment; therefore, Australia is the first country to receive financial support. The list of countries that get investments also includes the United States and the United Kingdom.
• Industry Focus – The listed funds tend to focus on the industries to which different branches of the Information Services are more or less connected: Finance, Business Development, and Banking. Such startups as Paytron or mx51 (both created in Australia) suggest that the top sphere to receive investments is Finance.
• Important Years – The majority of the VCs were established seven years ago, in 2014. The other three were created in 2017, 2012, and 2004. Roughly half of the listed firms arranged most of their deals in 2019. For the rest of the funds, the peaking activity was recorded in 2018, 2016, and 2015.
• Investments – Usually, VCs take part in 2 funding rounds per year, sometimes in 2 – 6. The minimum number of funding rounds for VCs in the sample is 4; the maximum is 177. The average number of funding rounds is 61.1, while the median is 59.0. Most commonly, the sampled firms participated 59 times. The lead investments differ from the average by -40.57-7.53 percentage points. The median and the average value for this index are -11.68 and -11.48, respectively. Such numbers indicate that some funds from the list (for this sample – ANZ) lead the investments less often than others (for instance, Artesian VC).
• Typical Rounds – Most commonly, the funds incline to participate with 2-4 investors and allocate less than 100 thousand US dollars per round. In some cases, the financing reaches 50-100 million for a time. The VCs’ multipliers for portfolio companies in descending order are 2.27, 0.44, and 0.41; for the rest, this figure equals 0.0.

Summing up, the most active investors in Information Services of Australia and Oceania, who take part in early funding, invest up to 6 times annually, putting in less than 100 thousand US dollars per round. All seven firms are located in Australia, in particular – in Sydney, Melbourne, and Paddington. The list of investment focus industries is topped by the Finance field, with Business Development and Banking coming after.