think project! attracts new investment

In January 2017, TA As­so­ci­ates, a lead­ing global growth pri­vate eq­uity firm, an­nounced it has com­pleted an in­vest­ment in Munich, Germany-based think project!, a provider of cross-en­ter­prise col­lab­o­ra­tion and in­for­ma­tion man­age­ment soft­ware to the con­struc­tion and en­gi­neer­ing in­dus­tries. Fi­nan­cial terms of the trans­ac­tion were (unfortunately) not dis­closed.

J. Mor­gan Sei­gler, a man­ag­ing di­rec­tor at TA As­so­ci­ates (who will join the think project! Board of Di­rec­tors) said:

“We be­lieve think project! is an ex­cep­tional com­pany that has es­tab­lished it­self as a lead­ing provider in a rel­a­tively unique, yet rapidly grow­ing sec­tor. Under the di­rec­tion of Thomas Bach­maier and his tal­ented man­age­ment team, think project! has en­joyed con­sis­tent growth in its core Ger­man mar­ket and in­ter­na­tion­ally. We are de­lighted to part­ner with a com­pany with such a strong foun­da­tion and wel­come the op­por­tu­nity to sup­port the con­tin­ued evo­lu­tion of think project!.”

think project! CEO Thomas Backmaier said:

“Since our found­ing, think project! has con­tin­u­ously strived to serve our cus­tomers and to help them achieve their goals by cater­ing to their in­di­vid­ual needs. We would like to thank co-Founder and for­mer in­vestor, WAL­TER Beteili­gun­gen und Im­mo­bilien AG, for their his­tor­i­cal sup­port, and are con­fi­dent that our new part­ner­ship with TA As­so­ci­ates will serve to strengthen our brand and fur­ther our growth. We are thrilled to begin work­ing with such an ex­pe­ri­enced and well-re­spected firm, and look for­ward to ben­e­fit­ing from TA’s valu­able in­sight and sup­port.”

Founded in 2000, think project! of­fers a SaaS, multi-ten­ant plat­form used by more than 100,000 users across over 8,000 pro­jects in 40 coun­tries. think project! de­liv­ers a read­ily avail­able and shape­able com­mon data en­vi­ron­ment (CDE) for con­struc­tion and en­gi­neer­ing pro­jects. Since 2015, its so­lu­tions have been build­ing in­for­ma­tion mod­el­ing (BIM)-en­abled, offering ap­pli­ca­tion pro­gram in­ter­faces (APIs) for close in­te­gra­tion with other busi­ness ap­pli­ca­tions and can be ac­cessed via mul­ti­ple touch­points and de­vices. think project! cur­rently sup­ports asset own­ers and gen­eral con­trac­tors across more than 20 sec­tors, in­clud­ing the en­ergy and au­to­mo­tive in­dus­tries, in­fra­struc­ture and gov­ern­ment pro­jects.

European battleground

The com­pany now has ap­prox­i­mately 200 em­ploy­ees across its Mu­nich head­quar­ters, its R&D cen­ters in Berlin and Szczecin, and, as Thomas told me last October, has been strengthening across Europe – in Spain (it established a joint venture with Madrid-based ProjectCenter in September 2016), Poland, Aus­tria (it ac­quired 70% of Aus­trian sales part­ner i-pm in June 2016), the Nether­lands, France (it acquired 60% of Lascom AEC, France’s market leader in product lifecycle management (PLM) and cross-enterprise collaboration software in September 2015), and in Germany (it acquired domestic competitor Conetics in October 2016).

The think project! news release repeats figures also used by global leader, Melbourne, Australia-based Aconex (who acquired think project’s Anglo-German rival Conject in March 2016) saying the global ad­dress­able mar­ket for con­struc­tion col­lab­o­ra­tion soft­ware is es­ti­mated by Frost & Sul­li­van at $5.6 bil­lion with a cur­rent pen­e­tra­tion of less than 10%, im­ply­ing a pre­sent mar­ket size of roughly $500 mil­lion. Ac­cord­ing to re­search from PwC, the global in­fra­struc­ture con­struc­tion mar­ket is ex­pected to grow 6.5% an­nu­ally to $9 tril­lion by 2025.

Naveen A. Wad­hera, a man­ag­ing di­rec­tor at TA As­so­ci­ates, adds:

“With our focus on in­vest­ing in prof­itable, grow­ing busi­nesses, con­struc­tion soft­ware is a highly at­trac­tive sec­tor for TA. Given its well-es­tab­lished pres­ence in Ger­many and ac­cel­er­at­ing growth in Spain, Poland, the Benelux coun­tries and else­where, we be­lieve think project! is well po­si­tioned as a mar­ket leader in con­ti­nen­tal Eu­rope. We look for­ward to work­ing with the think project! man­age­ment team, build­ing on their suc­cess to date and fur­ther­ing the com­pany’s ex­pan­sion through or­ganic and in­or­ganic growth.”