Verdane invests in brand management company Papirfly Group to create global marketing tech leader

Verdane, the European specialist growth equity investor, has agreed to acquire a significant majority stake in Papirfly Group AS, a Norway-based brand management software group, to create a global marketing technology leader. Papirfly Group consists of subsidiary companies Papirfly, Brandmaster, and Meriworks and is supported by a group of active investors including Chairman Erik Langaker. Together with the Group’s founders and management, Verdane will leverage its deep understanding of scaling successful SaaS companies, its international network and in-house team of operating experts to accelerate Papirfly Group’s global growth.

Founded in 2000 and based in Oslo, Norway, with offices throughout Europe, Papirfly Group provides a cloud-based, modular software platform for brand activation management (“BAM”), helping large companies create, edit, store, and distribute their brand assets. Papirfly Group has seen significant profitable growth in recent years and is a top-3 European leader in its space, with over a million regular users worldwide as of January 2021. The Group supports over 500 brands globally, including recognised businesses such as Goldman Sachs, Unilever, BMW, Helly Hansen and Subway.

The market for brand activation management software is new and experiencing strong underlying growth. With Verdane as a partner, Papirfly will look to accelerate product development and client portfolio growth, while expanding its international footprint throughout Europe and North America through organic and inorganic growth. As the preferred growth partner to tech-enabled businesses in Europe, Verdane will use its extensive experience backing software companies and its in-house team of operational experts, Verdane Elevate, to support Papirfly grow its platform and scale its operations. Together, Verdane and Papirfly Group have the ambition to create and maintain a leading global position in the marketing technology landscape.

Joakim Kjemperud, Principal at Verdane said: “We are very excited about the opportunity to partner with the Papirfly team and take an active role in its next growth phase. In a time of fierce competition for customer preference, Papirfly Group offers an innovative brand management toolkit for client-agency interactions, employer branding, retail marketing and corporate communications that promises to disrupt the legacy Digital Asset Management model. We look forward to deploying our deep sector expertise, networks, and operational expert teams to help Papirfly Group deliver on its promise to create distinct brand experiences that drive growth.”

Karl Fredrik Lund, Papirfly’s Group CEO, commented: “I’m delighted to welcome Verdane as our new majority owner. With one of the most active investor in software growth companies in Northern Europe onboard, I am confident that Papirfly Group is well positioned to become a global leader within brand activation management. In a time of distributed work teams and digitalised workflows, the business need for a single internal destination to communicate brand identity consistently and effectively to global audiences is imperative. Together with Verdane, we will transform how the world engages with brands.”

Verdane has a proven track record investing in software companies, having first invested in the sector in 2003. Its current portfolio of European software businesses includes Centra, Freespee, HappyOrNot, inRiver, Trivec, and Voyado.

The investment in Papirfly Group was made through Verdane Edda II. The parties have agreed not to disclose the financial terms of the transaction.