Susquehanna Growth Equity LLC, the three-year-old tech-buyout and growth-capital fund attached to the Bala Cynwyd investment trading giant Susquehanna International Group, says it's purchased JK Group Inc., a Plainsboro, NJ firm that sells software for corporate charity-management programs.
Husband-and-wife JK founders Roy Kaplan and Rita Kusler will stay involved with JK, but Susquehanna has brought in Brad Galle as JK's new chief executive. Galle (founder of the former Square Earth and AnswerU) "introduced us to JK," Susquehanna Growth partner Scott Feldman told me.
Susquehanna won't say what it paid, but Feldman says it's in the fund's usual range; the fund has invested a total of $120 million in 11 firms, in slugs from $5 million to $40 million. The fund has scored at least one profitable exit to date, Informatica's purchase of high-speed data service 29West, for more than $50 million in March, Feldman says.
Feldman says Susquehanna-backed firms have sales from $10 million to $50 million. "We want to build up our presence in the mid-Atlantic area," which has a solid concentration of tech firms but a relative scarcity of tech investors, compared to Silicon Valley or Boston, he told me.
Current Susquehanna investments stretch from Plimus (online payments) in San Jose, to HMP Communications (medical journals) in Malvern, to trade tech firms in New York, Chicago, and Boston, to Wisair, a wireles semiconductor firm in Israel. Feldman says Susquehannna's dealmakers have developed software expertise in part through the parent firm's own purchases of trading technology, giving it an edge in seeing IT trends as they develop in healthcare, telecom and other slower-to-adopt industries.