EIF supports EUR 115M first closing of Elaia Delta Fund

EIF supported Elaia Partners, the Paris-based leading VC firm, is proud to announce that its new Venture Capital fund, Elaia Delta Fund, has held its Initial Closing at EUR 115 million.

This new investment vehicle pursues the fundamental drivers of Elaia Partners’ historical strategy targeting European early-stage digital opportunities based on high disruption and on deep technology. Elaia Partners will focus on B2B or B2B2C business models demonstrating global ambitions. Thanks to its increased fund size and its innovative optimized portfolio management model, Elaia Partners will be able to drive even further its successful investment strategy by heavily supporting its best performing investments through their successive fundraisings.

Xavier Lazarus, Partner at Elaia Partners, says:  “The timing for raising a new fund and investing at an early stage in Europe could not be better. Especially, the French deep tech start-ups are enjoying a powerful momentum: the best data scientists, software engineers, AI researchers and applied mathematicians seize the opportunity to transform their knowledge into fantastic products, while benefiting from the great level of maturity reached by the entrepreneurial ecosystem. We truly believe that the success stories backed by Elaia Partners so far such as Criteo, Mirakl, Sigfox or Teads, are just a starting point of what will be achieved in the future. “

In this Initial Closing of Elaia Delta Fund, Elaia Partners welcomes all its major repeating investors, including Bpifrance and EIF, through the InnovFin mandate, and expanded its Limited Partners base with numerous French and international investors with complementary profiles (institutions, funds of funds, insurance companies, corporates, family offices) including Sabadell Asset Management, MGEN, BNP Paribas, EDF, Nexity, Financière Saint-James (vente-privee.com cofounder Michaël Bénabou’s personal holding), Groupe ADP, CEPAC Investissement & Développement, BRED Banque Populaire amongst others. Elaia Partners is advised in its fundraising strategy by Axonia Partners, a Paris based placement agent. Elaia Partners will keep subscriptions to the fund open due to ongoing interest from additional investors.  The firm is expecting to reach its EUR 150 million hard cap through a final close in the next few months.

Philippe Gire, Partner at Elaia Partners, says: “This highly successful fundraising is essentially due to the quality of our investment strategy and the consistent performance delivered since inception 15 years ago. It leads to compelling net cash returns for our existing investors, with close to EUR 300 million already returned from our previous funds, representing net returns above 3x.”

Pier Luigi Gilibert, EIF Chief Executive, said: “EIF is pleased to be supporting, Elaia - a niche player in the French ICT funding ecosystem. There are only a few players operating in the seed-stage financing space who are comfortable with funding high technology/IP rich companies. Elaia is an entrepreneur-friendly fund, helping companies not only at the investment, monitoring and exit stages but also when potential investment is being sought by an entrepreneur, all in line with EIF’s entrepreneurship objectives.”

Elaia Partners has started to deploy the fund earlier this year, with already three promising disclosed investments:

• Containo.us, an open source telecommunication solution provider for the Enterprise data center, which first product, Traefik, faces exceptional market traction. Emile Vauge, CEO, says: “I do not consider Elaia as an investor, but rather as a true partner. They know how to build a technology company and to bring it to the next level.”
• FretLink, a software company providing a SaaS platform and apps linking up shippers to carriers and disrupting the fret industry. Paul Guillemin, CEO, says: « We are proud to count Elaia as a partner by our side. Their ambition and vision are complemented by a real and valuable daily support. »
• Realytics, an AdTech company developing a technological and ROI-driven solution focused on TV advertising. It offers brands and agencies a refined way to track, measure and optimize their TV campaigns. Guillaume Belmas, CEO, says: “With Elaia Partners, we discovered a team whose involvement goes far beyond financial matters, and whose expertise in the AdTech sector is highly respected. Today, we know with absolute certainty that we have chosen the best partner for our further development in France and internationally.”

Two other investments (one in a robotics / AI company and the other in an AdTech specialist) will soon be disclosed, demonstrating the excellent momentum of Elaia Delta and the relevance of its investment thesis.

Marc Rougier, Partner at Elaia Partners, says: “These first investments perfectly illustrate what and who we want to support: fantastic entrepreneurs, deep technology with actual use-cases, large market opportunities coming from digital disruption within existing markets or from the creation of breakthrough offerings, with global ambition from day one. We do not have to be shy anymore when we see the quality of the projects born in Europe and in France!”

About Elaia Partners

Elaia Partners is an independent VC firm focused on Digital opportunities. Elaia Partners manages over €250M and invests in high-growth start-ups offering ground-breaking technologies, products and services. The fund focuses on early-stage investments, from the initial financing rounds to their emergence as global leaders and supports its best performers to reach a massive scale. The investment team brings together 50y+ of expertise in both VC and digital technologies and aims at playing an active role alongside entrepreneurs.

Elaia Partners diversified portfolio includes companies such as Sigfox, Mirakl, Criteo, Teads, Marfeel, adomik, Talent.io, ZenChef, EasyRECrue, Shift Technology, Agriconomie, Tinyclues, Orchestra Networks, Agnitio, etc.

More information on http://www.elaia.com

Twitter: @Elaia_Partners

About Bpifrance

Bpifrance’s capital investments are made by Bpifrance Investissement.

Bpirfrance, a subsidiary of the Caisse des Dépôts et de l’Etat and a preferred partner for entrepreneurs, assists companies from their start-up phase until listing on the stock exchange through offerings of credit, guarantees and its own capital. Bpifrance, in partnership with Business France, provides a variety of services focused on supporting innovation and strong export growth.

Bpifrance offers companies a range of financing options for each step in their development, and also provides financial products adapted to regional needs. With 47 regional offices, and 90% of its decisions taken in the regions, Bpifrance is a useful tool in helping entrepreneurs improve their competitiveness.

Bpifrance supports state-and region- led public policy objectives by:

• Helping companies to grow
• Preparing them for tomorrow’s competitive landscape
• Contributing to the development of an ecosystem that supports entrepreneurship

In working with Bpifrance, companies will find they have a strong, efficient and close partner that can respond to their many financial, innovation and investment needs.

www.bpifrance.fr - @bpifrance

About the Investment Plan for Europe

The Investment Plan for Europe, the so-called Juncker Plan, is one of the European Commission's top priorities. It focuses on boosting investments to create jobs and growth by making smarter use of new and existing financial resources, removing obstacles to investment and providing visibility and technical assistance to investment projects.

The European Fund for Strategic Investments (EFSI) is the central pillar of the Juncker Plan. It provides a first loss guarantee, allowing the EIB to invest in more, often riskier, projects. The EFSI is already showing concrete results. The projects and agreements approved for financing under the EFSI so far are expected to mobilise more than EUR 183 billion in investments and support over 425,000 SMEs across all 28 Member States.

In September 2016, President Juncker proposed to extend the EFSI by increasing its firepower and duration as well as reinforcing its strengths.

About InnovFin Equity

This financing is supported by InnovFin Equity with the financial backing of the European Union under Horizon 2020 Financial Instruments established under Regulation (EU) No 1291/2013 of the European Parliament and the Council establishing Horizon 2020 – the Framework Programme for Research and Innovation (2014-2020) and the European Fund for Strategic Investment (“EFSI”) set up under the Investment Plan for Europe. The purpose of EFSI is to help support financing and implementing productive investments in the European Union and to ensure increased access to financing.

For more information, go to http://www.eif.org/what_we_do/equity/single_eu_equity_instrument/innovfin-equity/index.htm

Contact :

Elaia Partners
Isabelle Amigues
Tel : 33 (0)1 76 74 92 52
e-mail: iamigues@elaia.com

EIF
David Yormesor
Tel.: +352 24 85 81 346
e-mail: d.yormesor@eif.org