New York-based Recognize Partners LP on Tuesday pumped a massive $100 million into Blend360, a six-year-old Columbia, Md., marketing and data science startup that has largely flown under the radar.
The funding is the first for Blend360, co founded by Patrick Hennessy and Tim Berry, veterans of the customer experience management firm Merkle. It is also the biggest yet for Recognize, which has built up a war chest of over $1.3 billion to invest in technology-services companies. D’Souza and Mike Grady, a partner at Recognize, will join Blend360’s board. Evercore served as the financial advisor for Blend360.
“There has been tremendous interest to invest in Blend from many great firms and Recognize stood out as the best fit for us,” said Berry. “They understand our business and they are extremely passionate about services companies in the data and analytics business.”
‘Message in a Paper’
Blend360 — which started out as C2G Partners— has a story to tell of its founding. In the summer of 2015, Hennessy and Berry apparently signed off on a piece of paper after drawing a simple picture of their startup’s business plan, and committed funds that have brought it this far.
The company, established in 2016, focuses on three businesses — data science, talent solutions and customer engagement. Hennessy says the company intends to become the “premier service provider of AI and ML solutions that optimize business results.” Blend360 has made at least one acquisition — Netherlands-based Engagement Factory.
Berry was on the executive team at Merkle for 20 years, most recently as president of Europe, where he expanded headcount five-fold to 1,500 in two years. He has a Masters in Statistics. Hennessy spent a couple of decades building and leading various businesses for Merkle. He studied history, and is an avid reader of business books.
Since its inception, Blend360 has made the Inc. 5000 list of Fastest Growing Companies every single year. It has over 600 employees with offices in New York, Maryland, Colorado and California, and in India.
Expertise in Tech Services
Recognize was founded by Frank D’Souza, previously the co founder and CEO of Cognizant Technology Solutions (Nasdaq: CTSH); former Oracle executive Charles Phillips; David Wasserman, previously an executive at the private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice; and Rajeev Mehta, a former Cognizant executive.
With Recognize, D’Souza seeks to leverage his deep expertise in the technology services business, gained through a long stint at outsourcer Cognizant. He led Cognizant for a dozen years until 2019, and served as its vice chairman until 2020. “Our primary focus on one sector allows us to provide valued-added domain expertise, focused sourcing and recruiting networks, and deep innovation and market insights,” he has said.
Recognize, launched in 2020, has made one of the largest debuts in recent memory, in June raising about $1.3 billion for its first fund. Known backers of the fund include the State of Wisconsin Investment Board, a pension fund.
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With planned investments of at least $50 million and up to $250 million, Recognize eyes early-stage companies that can generate jobs, especially in underrepresented communities.
“The services industry is perhaps the best creator of high-quality jobs of every industry,” Phillips told The Wall Street Journal. “I don’t think it’s an understatement to say it was the technology-services industry that built the middle class in many countries, for example, like India.”
Prior to Blend360, Recognize had made four portfolio investments — Ciklum Group, a European digital engineering and services company; SpringML, a California-based data-analytics company focused on Google Cloud; talent-services business Torc; and AST, a full service enterprise systems integrator with clients in the public and commercial sectors.
