Paul McCarney (Data Republic)
Australian collaboration software provider IXUP has acquired the intellectual property (IP) of Data Republic a month after its financial collapse.
The publicly listed company will pay $3 million for the data exchange platform provider, a 94 per cent reduction of the $50 million expended by the Australian start-up.
As part of the deal, IXUP said it hoped to take on previous and affected customers of Data Republic and was “in dialogue” with laid-off staff members about potential job opportunities.
Founded in 2014 by Paul McCarney and Danny Gilligan, Sydney-based Data Republic specialised in allowing organisations to share and license data, without risking consumer privacy or data security.
As well as Australia, the company also had a base in Singapore, which it launched in 2018 through the latter's government's Landing Pad.
That same year, ANZ took a stake in the company, while also becoming one of its customers. At the time, Data Republic had 50 partners, including the likes of Deloitte, PwC Australia and RXP Services.
Credit: Data Republic The company appointed Paul Arther as its first general manager for Australia and New Zealand at the end of 2019, although he left the company to join OutSystems a year later.
However, the company called in the administrators at the beginning of May this year after, according to The AFR, failing to find a US buyer and struggling under the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to IXUP CEO Marcus Gracey, the company followed its competitor’s evolution “closely for many years” and hoped the acquisition would “breathe significant life” into its technology.
“While it is unfortunate that the Data Republic business was not able to achieve the necessary scale required to continue in its previous form and we empathise with the affected employees and customers of their business, we believe that with a new and reinvigorated commercialisation strategy and in combination with IXUP’s aggressive growth plan, the Data Republic Technology Assets will demonstrate significant value,” he said.
In a notice to shareholders, IXUP said it intended to continue to deliver services to all of Data Republic’s previous and affected customer base.
Gracey claimed that the Data Republic technology will add a “well-developed, valuable and complementary product set to IXUP’s fast-growing technology stack”.
“Given that the purchase price represents such a significant discount to the capital expended by Data Republic to develop and deploy the assets being acquired, we are confident that we will generate significant commercial returns from this modest investment and breathe significant life back into the Data Republic Technology Assets to fulfil their full potential.”
IXUP said Data Republic’s data collaboration software could be applied to the global sports sponsorship and sports data segments, “areas of intense focus” for the company.
The company added that the purchase would complement its recent acquisition of UK-based sports technology company DataPOWA.
The deal is expected to complete within the next few days.
