Investments

Ciklum is a leading global experience engineering platform that blends next generation product engineering, exceptional customer experiences and artificial intelligence, working with Western European and US enterprise and fast growth clients. Within the business, Ciklum has a global team of 2,800+ highly skilled engineers, product owners and consultants across 20+ global offices and 15+ development centers strategically located in key markets for engineering talent across Europe (principally, Czech Republic, Poland, Spain and Ukraine) and globally (principally India).

Through Ciklum, Recognize is investing behind thematic tailwinds towards outsourced product engineering, where we see a continued large and fast growing opportunity driven by enduring need for digital transformation. The company in particular has deep experience in revenue generating products for clients across the FinTech, payments tech, digital commerce, digital entertainment and airline & logistics sectors where digitization and digital transformation remain key priorities.

Recognize was brought in on a proprietary basis by the existing investors in order to help transform the business by leveraging Recognize’s expertise in (i) transforming the business model to high-value service lines (ii) selling to enterprise clients across Europe and the US (iii) scaling offshore delivery centers, particularly in India and (iv) attracting high quality senior management talent to the organization.

2X is a leading next-generation business process outsourcing (“BPO”) provider of business-to-business (“B2B”) marketing-as-a-service (“MaaS”). Founded by CEO Domenic Colasante and headquartered in Berwyn Pennsylvania, 2X seeks to transform traditional B2B marketing operating models by offering high-impact, cost-effective and execution-driven services through delivery bases in Malaysia and the Philippines. The Company aims to solve critical marketing pain points across creative asset & design services, account-based marketing campaigns, and marketing technology (“MarTech”) management.

Through 2X, Recognize is investing behind thematic tailwinds towards outsourced marketing and the proliferation of more complex B2B marketing technologies. B2B marketing has historically lagged in adoption of both outsourcing and digital strategies. On the former, currently only ~10% of marketing is outsourced versus other more mature functions, which are at ~50% outsourced penetration. On the latter, ongoing investments in B2B MarTech are expected to drive heightened need for cost-effective expert resources at scale.

Recognize was selected as partner-of-choice in the context of a process in which Domenic valued Recognize’s (i) experience in scaling large offshore services organizations, (ii) connectivity to enterprise buyers and (iii) understanding of key technology players within the B2B MarTech stack. Given Recognize’s perception of the Company’s favorable market position, combined with Recognize’s approach to value creation, Recognize’s goal is to build the premier B2B marketing outsource provider.

AST Corporation (“AST”) is a leading cloud and managed services provider for the Oracle and Salesforce ecosystems. Founded in 1995 and headquartered in Lisle, Illinois, AST drives & facilitates migration of legacy “on-premise” applications to the cloud, specializing in public sector and highly regulated commercial verticals. With a delivery base that spans onshore and offshore (in India), AST is a unique services company helping clients transform their application environments around highly attractive ecosystems.

Recognize’s investment in AST was part of its extensive diligence efforts around leading cloud applications, notably Oracle. The team at Recognize, informed particularly by Charles Phillips and his previous leadership at Oracle, identified the software ecosystem as particularly interesting. Oracle is in the early innings of ERP cloud adoption with only ~20% of its clients using cloud products, resulting in over ~14,000 customers potentially expected to shift to Oracle’s Fusion cloud suite over the next several years. We believe AST’s positioning as a differentiated provider within complex, highly regulated verticals should enable the business to capture some of the opportunity as Oracle clients migrate to the cloud.

Recognize was selected as partner-of-choice in the context of a limited process. The management team and Recognize were able to lock arms and develop a comprehensive value creation plan in advance of closing. Specially, the team collectively is focused on i) investing and building go-to-market infrastructure to maximize win rates within AST’s core and adjacent markets, ii) enhancing delivery operations to further optimize client services and maximize margin opportunities, iii) leveraging Recognize access within Oracle to drive momentum for both public sector and commercial segments and iv) identifying and executing strategic, accretive acquisitions to drive growth, as well as expand into attractive, adjacent software ecosystems.

Blend360 is a leader in advanced data analytics and artificial intelligence (“AI”) services. Founded in 2016 by Patrick Hennessey and Tim Berry (previous executives at Merckle) and headquartered in Columbia, Maryland, Blend360 drives critical business insight for large enterprise clients by leveraging data science, data engineering, advanced measurement capabilities, and strategic consulting.

Recognize’s investment in Blend360 was part of its longstanding initiative into data and advanced intelligence services. Recognize believes that the Company is uniquely positioned in a dynamic market currently at an inflection point as the explosion of data and artificial intelligence necessitates businesses to prioritize data governance and analytics. We believe a confluence of factors, including growth in spend and proliferation of data, has created an imbalance of demand over supply for science talent, placing a premium value on Blend360’s data analytics solutions.

The Blend360 transaction represents an archetypical Recognize investment, from theme identification to sourcing via proprietary channels to selection by Blend360 as a partner-of-choice. During a prolonged diligence process and thereafter, Recognize and the Blend360 management team have locked arms around a strategy to (i) effectively provision a solutions set around artificial intelligence solutions, (ii) enhance go-to-market capabilities, (iii) optimize global delivery and (iv) drive inorganic growth, ultimately in pursuit of building the preeminent data and AI solutions provider.

Egen is a leading product engineering, data and AI platform, with particularly strong capabilities in the Google Cloud and Salesforce ecosystems. The company was formed by the merger of SpringML and Egen Solutions in 2023, and boasts a team of 400+ talented cloud, data and Ai specialists in both the US and India. Combined, the company represents one of the largest independent GCP ecosystem services partners in the market, with high quality clients in both the enterprise, healthcare and public sector domains.

Through Egen, Recognize is investing behind the continued tailwinds that support the growth of data engineering and AI as well as its emerging convergence with product engineering and cloud modernization. As businesses seek to drive outcomes leveraging their data, the products they build (product engineering) and infrastructure they use (cloud modernization) will become increasingly important in determining how they access and deliver their data.

Recognize was chose by both the founders of SpringML and Egen as the partner of choice in a proprietary transaction. As part of the value creation process, the deal team is focused on (i) developing deep industry focused solutions around key verticals and (ii) deepening relationships with ecosystem.

MediaMint is a next-generation vertically-focused provider of digital advertising operations services to enterprise-scale platforms, publishers, and agencies. Leveraging a base of ~2,000 employees across the US, India, and Poland, MediaMint’s core offerings include digital campaign setup, implementation, optimization, monitoring, quality assurance, and reporting, as well as related service lines including technical support / customer experience, creative, and data analytics, all of which are mission-critical marketing functions that require substantial domain expertise and process experience across fragmented technology platforms.

Through MediaMint, Recognize is investing behind thematic tailwinds powering the digital marketing industry, which is large, rapidly growing, and technically complex. The industry is also in the early stages of outsourcing / offshoring the core operational backbone that supports advertising platforms, publishers, and agencies. MediaMint is positioned to benefit from these expected outsourcing tailwinds and its exposure to higher-growth sub-segments of digital marketing spend given its channel focus on over-the-top (OTT) / connected TV (CTV), programmatic, and retail media.

Recognize was approached to partner on the transaction as a value-added partner with specialist industry and operational expertise. Leveraging MediaMint’s attractive market position, Recognize, Everstone, and the management team are jointly pursuing value creation priorities in (i) building out the enterprise go-to-market strategy, (ii) deepening the account strategy function for key strategic clients, (iii) enhancing process efficiency through technology enablement and process automation, (iv) hiring talented executives and leadership support, and (v) executing strategic and accretive acquisitions.

Qubika is a leading nearshore product and data engineering platform serving enterprise US clients with high-quality and same time zone delivery in Latin America. Qubika was founded in 2023 following the merger of December Labs and Moove-IT, creating a scalable platform with ~500 skilled engineers, product managers and consultants across Uruguay, Colombia and Latin America. The combined company has served industry leading customers such as Pluralsight, Unilever, Shopify, Google and Nest, offering a blended model that combines deep data, design and development expertise.

Through Qubika, Recognize is investing behind thematic tailwinds around nearshore data and product engineering, where we see a continued mix shift opportunity driven by the advantages of time-zone alignment, cultural affinity and strength in the technical talent pool.

The opportunity was sourced following an intensive deep dive into the nearshore theme, where the Recognize team met opportunities throughout the region. Seeing a unique situation to build a platform through merger, the Recognize and Qubika teams found strong joint opportunities for value creation through (i) developing an enterprise-ready GTM motion, (ii) strengthening talent across the organization and (iii) executing against a continued M&A program.

Thunder is a leading Salesforce consulting, implementation and managed services provider with vertical expertise across the communications, media, technology, consumer and manufacturing sectors. Thunder was founded in 2020 and leverages a highly skilled onshore delivery base, consisting of approximately 70 employees, along with recent offshore delivery expansion in the Philippines.

Through Thunder, Recognize is investing behind thematic tailwinds across the Salesforce ecosystem, with a particular focus on complex multi-cloud instances. Salesforce has continued to see rapid growth across their cloud ecosystems and has seen particular success driving multi-cloud adoption. They rely on leading partners like Thunder to drive successful outcomes for clients and ensure continued performance and retention long-term.

Recognize was brought in on a proprietary basis by the founding team to help guide the business through its next phase of growth. As part of the value creation process, the deal team is focused on (i) building out a global delivery model across offshore and nearshore regions, (ii) orienting the GTM motion towards large scale enterprises in key verticals, (iii) investing behind next-gen accelerators / IP, (iv) attracting high quality senior management, and (v) identifying and executing strategic M&A.

Torc is a next-generation talent cloud, connecting companies to global digital engineers through an artificial intelligence-enabled (“AI-enabled”), automated platform. With a community of thousands of globally-distributed developers on one side and enterprises increasingly seeking digital enablement on the other, Torc is creating an ecosystem for frictionless talent placement.

Founded in 2021, incubated by Recognize and launched shortly thereafter, Torc is Recognize’s first studio investment, purpose-built to capitalize on Future of Work trends that Recognize had identified. The platform was founded with a number of core tenets, which remain pillars of the company today: for engineers, (i) find high-quality, on-demand, flexible work, (ii) be rewarded for productivity, (iii) engage with a community; for enterprises, (i) easily access productive talent in through next-generation staffing models, (ii) accelerate speed-to-code, and (iii) work through enterprise grade processes, including security.

The founding of Torc was the result of co-creation, ideation and business-building by the Recognize team and Torc’s founders – industry veterans, Mike Morris and Dave Messinger. Since it’s founding, Torc and Recognize have been collectively focused on (i) building out of Torc’s enterprise-facing go-to-market strategy, (ii) accelerating technology development to better enable productivity tracking for both developers and enterprises and (iii) creating viral community growth through positive developer experiences.

Blue Mantis is a premier IT services provider with deep experience in managed services, cybersecurity, and cloud solutions, with a 30+ year history of helping clients achieve business modernization by applying next-generation technologies. Blue Mantis has domain expertise across a range of capabilities including cybersecurity, cloud enablement, data center modernization, modern workspaces and network infrastructure. They provide an end-to-end solution offering for customers across these capabilities by providing professional and managed services, cloud capacity and spend optimization, and hardware and software resale. Blue Mantis services mid-market and enterprise clients with a North American focus across multiple vertical markets including business services, healthcare, financial services, manufacturing, and public sector.

Through Blue Mantis, Recognize is investing behind multiple underlying tailwinds that it believes are powering the broader IT services market, including the continued transition to the cloud, increased cyber security spend, and significant AI investment. Over the past few years, Blue Mantis has built out and scaled their professional and managed services offerings to fit the customer needs. This has positioned Blue Mantis as a strategic partner that assesses, modernizes, and manages the entire IT stack for clients and solves an increasing gap in the market.

The opportunity was sourced following a deep dive into the IT solutions theme, where Recognize met multiple solutions providers across the US, and eventually engaged with Blue Mantis through proprietary discussions with the existing investor. We are now positioned to drive value creation through (i) building on the existing foundation to drive a best-in-class go-to-market motion; (ii) further extending and productizing the solution set to match market trends and client needs; (iii) optimizing and growing offshore and nearshore delivery centers; (iv) embedding automation and tech-enablement into recurring revenue offerings; and (v) adding scale, capabilities and delivery geographies through accretive M&A.