Indy tech firm lands $100M investment
INDIANAPOLIS (Inside INdiana Business) — An Indianapolis-based tech company has secured a $100 million investment from Maryland-based JMI Equity. OnBoard, which had developed a cloud-based management platform for corporate boards, says it will use the funding to accelerate product development, fuel expansions into additional markets and strategic acquisitions and further grow the OnBoard brand. Chief Executive Officer Paroon Chadha says the investment underscores the company’s performance, particularly during the pandemic.
In an interview with Inside INdiana Business, Chadha said the investment will support the company’s mission to help corporate board rooms be more efficient.
“This is going to allow us to cast a wider net and really introduce a lot of things to our space,” said Chadha. “This will allow us to drive innovation and bring about new functionality, new insight into the intelligence platform that we are putting together. We’ve always believed that boards should be informed, effective and they should be uncomplicated.”
OnBoard says the pandemic highlighted an urgent need for digital board platforms as all boards were suddenly forced to go virtual.
“The pandemic showed everyone that the benefits of digital transformation, whether borne of necessity or desire, are profound – and that many boards have been left out of this increasingly important advance,” said Chadha. “For boards and leadership teams of any organization, digitally transforming their boardroom ultimately means increased agility and better performance.”
Since the pandemic began, OnBoard as added more than 1,000 customers from 25 countries, including financial service providers, nonprofits, learning institutions and healthcare providers. The company has seen a 40% increase in average in-app user engagement and was designated the highest-rated board management platform in the Apple App store.
The company also added 48 employees in 2020, a year-over-year increase of 20%. “We’ve already added 30 people this year. We have another 50 people we are adding to our team as we speak,” said Chadha.
The company currently serves clients in the U.S., Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia. Chadha says the investment will help the company to further expand into the Europe, Middle East and Africa market, as well as the Asia-Pacific market.
OnBoard is a subsidiary of Passageways, a company founded in 2003 in West Lafayette by Chadha and now based in Indy. The company says the JMI investment will also support growth and innovation initiatives for OnBoard’s sister solution, OnSemble, an employee intranet platform.
“This growth investment underscores the strategic need for businesses and organizations around the world to increase their boardroom intelligence and bolster data security,” Bob Nye, general partner at JMI Equity, said in a news release. “We’re excited to work with Paroon and the OnBoard team to continue to deliver innovative solutions that enable boards everywhere to be more collaborative, efficient, and strategic.”
As part of the investment, Nye and JMI Partner Krishna Potarazu and Principal Mac Williams will join the OnBoard Board of Directors.
The investment is the second in as many months for JMI Equity. Last month, the firm invested more than $120 million in Indianapolis-based Greenlight Guru, which has developed a quality management platform for medical device manufacturers.