i-graduate surveys international student opinion about different universities, then tracks and benchmarks the data, delivering comparative insight to the education sector worldwide, in order to help institutions deliver a world class student experience to enhance competitive advantage.
Starting with 24 universities in Britain the company grew quickly. “It was basically a kitchen-table start-up,” says Will Archer, CEO, about i-graduate, the company he and his wife founded in early 2005.
After growing the business over seven years, i-graduate caught the eye of the publicly-listed Tribal Group in mid-2012 who approached i-graduate with an offer to buy them out. At the time of the approach from Tribal Group, Will and his wife Lindsay were two years into a five-year plan and were focused on growing the business. Our part time Finance Director was there to help cast an objective and strategic eye over that.
The Engagement
Numitas worked with i-graduate providing a part time Finance Director who was invited on to the board to give a strategic overview of the business and provide an independent financial perspective. As an experienced finance director who had been involved in the sale and purchase of numerous businesses, our Numitas part time Finance Director was the perfect person to manage the negotiation objectively. Will says Numitas put a “comfortable distance” between him and the potential buyer. “It didn’t distract me from running the business. Our part time Finance Director was able to look at it impartially.” Numitas helped to manage the whole sale process, including the negotiation between the two parties, legal papers and completing due diligence.
The result was a sale that was, “beautifully managed,” says Will. “Numitas kept all the emotion out of the bid itself. Our part time Finance Director represented us in a way that my wife and I were able to trust completely and he helped the staff to understand what was happening.”
Outcomes
Engaging with a part time Finance Director meant i-graduate secured a higher price. As well as experience, a part-time finance director can bring much-needed objectivity to a business that is looking to expand, secure funding or to sell.
The final sale figure was for £7.5m, which included an ‘earn out’ period of three years. Will and his wife stayed involved for that time before finally handing over the reins. “Numitas was great at talking us through it all, helping us to understand at what point we thought it would be worth making a deal.”
The deal was finalised a week before Christmas 2012. Throughout the sale, i-graduate was able to scale the time required from the part time Finance Director up or down depending on their needs.
Having started on a couple of days a month, the last two to three weeks was almost fulltime.
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i-graduate surveys international student opinion about different universities, then tracks and benchmarks the data, delivering comparative insight to the education sector worldwide, in order to help institutions deliver a world class student experience to enhance competitive advantage.
Scintacor (formerly Applied Scintillation Technologies) is a successful British company and the world leader in phosphor and scintillation technology, which allows the conversion of different radiations into light for imaging and detection. The growing demand for their expertise meant that Scintacor decided it was time to look for further investment into the business, which is where Numitas was able to help.
GeoSpock is an extreme-scale spatial big data platform company that provides analytics, visualisation and builds insight for four main verticals: location based mobile advertising, telecommunications, connected cars, and smart cities.
AIM-listed Ubisense was founded in 2002 and is a high growth, Cambridge-based technology firm. Its highly specialist expertise serves 500 customers in 50 countries with enterprise location intelligence products and solutions that help them with their high value manufacturing operations.
For example, its work with automotive firms BMW and Aston Martin and with aerospace giant Airbus, enables specific components and tooling to be located and supplied automatically to a manufacturing location, using state of the art, ultra-wideband radio technology.
Our client is a SaaS business delivering real time data and information to the NHS and helping to manage patient footfall through its mobile app. The company currently turns over £2m and employs some 35 people onshore UK with an outsourced development centre in India.
i-graduate surveys international student opinion about different universities, then tracks and benchmarks the data, delivering comparative insight to the education sector worldwide, in order to help institutions deliver a world class student experience to enhance competitive advantage.
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