Destiny’s recent acquisition of Soluno has been written in the stars for years, it was just a matter of getting the timing right, according to Group CEO Daan de Wever.
The Belgian cloud comms provider recently gobbled up Swedish pair Soluno and Telepo to become the largest UCaaS platform provider for SME’s and service providers in Europe with expected revenues of €170m.
De Wever has long-established working relationships with Soluno and Telepo and he saw that the three firms shared similar aspirations for their growth.
“For me, this acquisition was like a wedding; we had already fallen in love a few years ago, but it was just about timing because we had to wait because we were both backed by private equity,” de Wever told UC Today.
“There is a certain moment that you say ‘Okay now the opportunity is there, let’s grab it’. The nice thing about this transaction is not that these three teams of Soluno, Telepo and Destiny have the same aspirations, motivations, and ambitions. And I am lucky that I have a very motivated investor in Apax Partners who fully supported us in the execution of these deals because these deals were big”
The chief exec added that he sees this as the “starting point” to create a European equivalent to some of the larger US-based technology providers and that over the coming years investment will be funneled into R&D and innovation.
“These acquisitions really accelerate and bring our own IP even deeper within our organisation and deeper with our partners. I won’t say that we need to be the most innovative, but we will be one of the leading innovative platforms,” he stated.
The acquisition of Soluno was highlighted as giving Destiny access to the Nordics, a market de Wever is keen to integrate with and learn from to accelerate its growth across Europe.
“I see a lot of US-based players coming to Europe who treat it as one country, and who think that this approach will work – that’s not true,” he elaborated.
“Europe is 30 different countries with different regulations, different types of cultures, languages, etc. But what’s so cool about Europe is the maturity of technology and the way it is used is completely different.
“The Nordics is a mature market and is seen as very innovative; they are innovators and we believe that by having these capabilities they can learn from us and we can learn from them. This knowledge will also help us accelerate in different European geographies”
Destiny is not done with M&A just yet, despite achieving its ambition of becoming Europe’s largest UCaaS platform provider. Geographical presence is a priority for the comms provider.
“M&A will not stop, I want to go full speed forward,” he declared.
“Geographical footprint with strong local leadership is key for us. We believe in cloud adoption and we need SaaS and we really want to build around our own IP with strong local leadership teams.”
