Sagewind Capital and Berenson Lead Acquisition of The Athene Group

NEW YORK, Dec. 6, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- Sagewind Capital LLC ("Sagewind"), a New York-based private equity firm, and Berenson Holdings LLC ("Berenson") announced today that they led the acquisition of The Athene Group ("Athene" or "The Company"), a software and services company serving the wealth management industry. As part of the transaction, Insight Venture Partners and Salesforce Ventures are participating as investors. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Athene provides a cloud-based product, Skience, to the wealth management industry, including broker-dealers and registered investment advisors. Skience's clients rely on its agile and intuitive enterprise class platform to power and streamline mission critical business processes including client on-boarding with straight through processing, data aggregation, compliance and analytics.  Skience is a leading wealth management product in the Salesforce ecosystem, and it utilizes its partnership with Salesforce to provide its clientele with expert implementation and integration of the Salesforce Platform.

"We are excited to partner with Athene, which is well positioned to capitalize on the enormous opportunities for technology providers in the wealth management industry," said Steven Lefkowitz, Managing Partner of Sagewind. "Athene has developed industry-leading technology that creates significant time and resource savings for wealth advisors. We look forward to supporting the Athene team as they execute on their growth strategy, including investment in sales and marketing and the addition of new technological capabilities."

Sanjeev Kumar, Founder and CEO of Athene, and Kripa Shetty, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer, will continue in their current roles.

"I am enormously proud of the Athene team, its history and accomplishments, and the successes we have consistently delivered to our clients via Skience and our other services," added Mr. Kumar. "Sagewind, Berenson and Athene's other new investors have track records of working closely and constructively with management teams to build the value of businesses, and I am excited to partner with them in this next chapter of Athene's history."

Michael Crawford, formerly a Principal at The Hackett Group, has joined the Athene team as Executive Chairman and will focus on Athene's market expansion and growth plans. Mr. Crawford said, "It is an honor to join Athene at such an exciting time. I look forward to working with the team to build on the company's position and momentum within the Salesforce ecosystem by enhancing awareness of Athene's unique value proposition within the wealth management industry."

"Sanjeev, co-founder Kripa Shetty and the talented team at Athene have built Skience, the industry's preeminent wealth advisor desktop, using subject matter expertise and relationships built over decades," said Mohammed Ansari, Managing Director of Berenson. "Mike brings a strong track record of building client service and go-to-market teams to deliver transformative results for enterprise clients. We are delighted to be a part of the next chapter of Athene's growth."

About The Athene Group
The Athene Group, LLC is a technology services and product company based in Herndon, VA.  Athene was founded in 2001, and has grown consistently and organically since inception.  Athene offers technology services in the Salesforce ecosystem, and a product called Skience for the Wealth Management industry. Athene also has an offshore location in Bangalore, India.

About Sagewind Capital LLC
Sagewind Capital LLC is a New York-based middle-market private equity firm. Sagewind Capital seeks to build a concentrated portfolio of companies that have the potential for organic growth and can serve as platforms for substantial value creation through a buy-and-build strategy.  Since inception, Sagewind has made seven investments across a number of industries, including government services, software, information technology, healthcare and business services. For more information please visit www.sagewindcapital.com.

About Berenson Holdings LLC
Founded in 1990, Berenson Holdings LLC is an independent merchant-banking firm based in New York. The firm's principal investing business makes buyout and growth equity investments, in partnership with high-quality management teams. For more information, please visit www.berensonco.com.

About Insight Venture Partners
Insight Venture Partners is a leading global venture capital and private equity firm investing in high-growth technology and software companies that are driving transformative change in their industries. Founded in 1995, Insight currently has over $20 billion of assets under management and has cumulatively invested in more than 300 companies worldwide. Our mission is to find, fund, and work successfully with visionary executives, providing them with practical, hands-on growth expertise to foster long-term success. Across our people and our portfolio, we encourage a culture around a core belief: growth equals opportunity. For more information on Insight and all its investments, visit www.insightpartners.com or follow us on Twitter @insightpartners.

About Salesforce Ventures
Salesforce is the fastest growing top five enterprise software company and the #1 CRM provider globally. Salesforce Ventures—the company's corporate investment group—invests in the next generation of enterprise technology that extends the power of the Salesforce Customer Success Platform, helping companies connect with their customers in entirely new ways. Portfolio companies receive funding as well as access to the world's largest cloud ecosystem and the guidance of Salesforce's innovators and executives. With Salesforce Ventures, portfolio companies can also leverage Salesforce's expertise in corporate philanthropy by joining Pledge 1% to make giving back part of their business model. Salesforce Ventures has invested in more than 280 enterprise cloud startups in 18 different countries since 2009. For more information, please visitwww.salesforce.com/ventures.

Contact:         

Mark Semer or Cameron Njaa
Kekst CNC
(212) 521-4800
[email protected] or [email protected]

SOURCE Sagewind Capital