Three big deals: SAP Ventures; Heartland Payment Systems; LLR Partners

Tom Paine

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SAP Ventures announced today the formation of a new fund, SAP Ventures Fund II, which SAP is funding with $650 million. SAP Ventures points out in its release that when combined with the SAP HANA Real Time Fund, a $405 million fund-of-funds that invests in early stage VC funds, SAP Ventures has added more than $1 billion in VC funding within the past twelve
months. SAP Ventures also said it is building out a dedicated 10-person business development team to enable its portfolio companies to access and leverage the capabilities and expertise of the SAP enterprise ecosystem through its limited partner, SAP AG.

SAP Ventures operates as an independent company from SAP AG, which remains its sole limited partner. SAP Ventures says it has had 12 initial public offering (IPO) and merger and acquisition (M&A) events to date in 2013, including IPOs Control 4, Just Dial, Marin Software, Tremor Video and Violin Memory; and acquired portfolio companies Aepona, Apriso, Datria, ExactTarget, Ignite, ScaleIO and Voxeo.

Totals assets under management by SAP Ventures are now over $1.4 billion. Nino Marakovic is CEO and managing director of SAP Ventures.

Philadelphia-based private equity firm LLR Partners has plunked down a $50 million investment in Cigital, a Dulles, VA provider of products and services for software security. Cigital, which considers itself as the world’s largest consulting firm specializing in software security, was founded in 1992 as an offshoot of DARPA. Cigital provides services to numerous private sector clients as well as to government agencies.

The investment reflects LLR's increased focus on the federal government technology sector and its recent staff additions in the DC area.

Princeton-based Heartland Payment Systems, looking to expand its mobile retail payment capabilities, has invested $20 million in Boston-based Leaf, which developed a "tablet designed for commerce" which works as a mobile extension of a retailer's POS system. Leaf will remain independent and Heartland will not have exclusivity in terms of distribution to the payment processing or POS industries, Bostinno reports.

Heartland also works with another Boston-based mobile payment tech startup, DreamIt Ventures alum LevelUp, although Heartland does not appear on LevelUp's investors roster on its website. LevelUp and Leaf are different though some aspects of their services appear duplicative, and there has been no word on how Heartland's Leaf investment might impact its relationship with LevelUp. I've asked Heartland representatives for comment on that, and will let you know what I hear.

Update: In response to my question about how its Leaf investment would effect Heartland's
relationship with LevelUp, I received the following response attributed to Heartland CEO
Bob Carr:


"While Heartland remains one of LevelUp's distribution partners, our ultimate goal is to enable greater merchant choice by allowing business owners to work with the business solution providers that they deem best for their individual needs. We are excited that LevelUp has signed on to participate in the Leaf ecosystem and look forward to other providers and developers building applications for the Leaf Appstore to assist merchants in best managing their businesses."