Dallas, TX – April 28, 2020 – o9 Solutions, Inc. (“o9”) today announced a minority equity investment from KKR that values the company at over a billion dollars. o9’s AI-powered Integrated Business Planning platform helps leading global enterprises drive digital transformation and has grown annual recurring revenue by more than 100% in the last year. This first external capital raise in o9’s history will accelerate the go-to-market initiatives for its next-generation technology across industry verticals and global markets.
"This investment from a global firm of KKR’s caliber is a great validation of the differentiation of the o9 platform, the team we have built, and potential we have for value creation across industry verticals. With KKR’s backing we will be able to accelerate the delivery of our differentiated technology solution to clients across the globe and realize our objective of becoming a category-defining platform for digital transformation of integrated business planning and operations."
Chakri Gottemukkalao9 CEO and Co-Founder
Today the o9 platform is powering the planning and operations for large enterprise clients in many industry verticals, including retail, consumer goods, apparel, consumer electronics, industrial manufacturing, and oil & gas. These customers use o9’s cloud platform to create next generation planning capabilities that:
- Create improved visibility into drivers of demand;
- Improve quality of forecasts using AI models;
- Evaluate different commercial actions to close gaps to plan;
- Provide better real-time visibility into risks and opportunities across extended global supply chains;
- Match demand and supply using intelligent algorithms;
- Drive rapid what-if scenario planning to evaluate P&L impacts of different decision choices; and
- Drive plans into execution through digital engagement with customers, suppliers and internal operations.
- All these capabilities are driven off a single platform and code base thus enabling efficient and rapid value delivery for clients.
“The capabilities offered by the o9 platform are now increasingly mission critical for any global company”, said Sanjiv Sidhu, o9 Chairman and Co-Founder.
"As we talk to CxOs, we see that the COVID-19 pandemic has only elevated in their minds the need for accelerated digital transformation of planning and operations capabilities to drive structural improvements in resilience, agility, environmental sustainability, productivity and cost management. o9 is uniquely positioned to help and be the partner of choice for companies as they build their digital future."
Sanjiv Sidhu9 Chairman and Co-Founder
Jake Heller, Co-head of KKR’s Technology Growth team in the Americas, said: “Sanjiv and Chakri are industry pioneers who have built a best-in-class team and technology platform with category defining potential. Whether you look at trends in e-commerce and digitization, rapidly changing consumer habits, or the heightened uncertainty in the world today, all indicators point to the vital importance of faster, smarter and more dynamic planning capabilities for managing global supply chains and operations. We look forward to working closely alongside the o9 team to continue building on the company’s tremendous momentum.”
Jimmy Miele, Principal at KKR, said: “As we evaluated this investment and spoke to industry participants, what stood out is o9’s reputation for innovation and excellence in execution, as well as the strong endorsements of their technology by blue-chip clients. We are excited to back this team of proven supply chain planning industry pioneers as they scale and enhance their next-generation platform.”
KKR is making its investment in o9 primarily from its KKR Next Generation Technology Growth Fund II. Mizuho Securities USA acted as exclusive Financial Advisor to KKR.
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About KKR
KKR is a leading global investment firm that manages multiple alternative asset classes, including private equity, energy, infrastructure, real estate and credit, with strategic partners that manage hedge funds. KKR aims to generate attractive investment returns for its fund investors by following a patient and disciplined investment approach, employing world-class people, and driving growth and value creation with KKR portfolio companies. KKR invests its own capital alongside the capital it manages for fund investors and provides financing solutions and investment opportunities through its capital markets business. References to KKR’s investments may include the activities of its sponsored funds. For additional information about KKR & Co. Inc. (NYSE: KKR), please visit KKR’s website at www.kkr.com and on Twitter @KKR_Co.
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o9 Solutions
The Digital Brain Platformo9 offers a leading AI-powered Planning, Analytics & Data platform called the Digital Brain that helps companies across industry verticals transform traditionally slow and siloed planning into smart, integrated and intelligent planning and decision making across the core supply chain, commercial and P&L functions. With o9’s Digital Brain platform, companies are able to achieve game-changing improvements in quality of data, ability to detect demand and supply risks and opportunities earlier, forecast demand more accurately, evaluate what-if scenarios in real time, match demand and supply intelligently and drive alignment and collaboration across customers, internal stakeholders and suppliers around the integrated supply chain and commercial plans and decisions. Supported by a global ecosystem of partners, o9’s innovative delivery methodology helps companies achieve quick impact in customer service, inventory levels, resource utilization, as well as ESG and financial KPIs—while enabling a long-term, sustainable transformation of their end-to-end planning and decision-making capabilities.
