Leanix buys up competitors

Last year, the Bonn-based start-up received a valuation of 450 million euros, and CEO Christ is not ruling out an IPO. Now Leanix is buying up its competitor Cleanshelf and integrating the service into its own offering.

Slack, Zoom, Teams and many other SaaS offerings are the winners of the coronavirus pandemic. As a company, it is difficult to keep track of how employees are using the various products. This is where Leanix comes in and wants to create order. The Bonn-based start-up sees itself as a kind of "Google Maps for IT". Leanix has now acquired its competitor Cleanshelf, which is based in the USA and Slovenia. Leanix is paying "an amount in the mid double-digit millions", as founder and CEO André Christ told the Handelsblatt says.

"Cleanshelf SaaS Management and Leanix Application Portfolio Management complement each other perfectly," says Christ about the merger. Cleanshelf offers a fully automated view of all of a company's SaaS applications. For example, credit card spending by employees is read out and thus seen when a SaaS application is used by many people, so that the purchase of a license for the entire company is a good idea.

In the USA, Leanix is adding Cleanshelf's San Francisco and Denver locations to its Boston office. The American business already accounts for 40 percent of the company's turnover, and the focus will shift even further with the addition of the new locations.

The founder and CEO of Cleanshelf, Dusan Omercevic, will lead the office in Ljubljana as Managing Director and contribute to the further development of the products. "We are delighted to become part of the Leanix family," says Omercevic. The Cleanshelf product will be available to Leanix customers from April 1.

Leanix is not yet profitable; last summer, the company was valued at 450 million euros. At the beginning of 2020, Leanix raised 80 million dollars in a Series D financing round, with Goldman Sachs as the main investor. This means that Leanix has an experienced partner at its side for potential IPOs, and Christ does not want to rule out this step for his company.