C5 Capital, a London-headquartered technology investment specialist, has appointed Marcos Battisti as partner and head of the C5 Cloud Partners fund.
Battisti previously held the position of managing director of Intel Capital in London since April 2010.
He has been investing in technology venture and growth for 18 years. Most recently he managed Intel Capital’s efforts in Western Europe and Israel and served as a member of Intel Capital’s investment committee.
Battisti has backed and exited companies such as Amplidata in Belgium, Aldebaran in France, Anobit in Israel and Azure Solution in the UK, amongst others.
He most recently sat on the board of directors of VOSS (UK), Adaptive Mobile Security (Ireland) and Sigfox (France). He was also a member of the Venture Capital Committee of the British Private Equity & Venture Capital Association.
In 2015 C5 announced a cloud-focused accelerator partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS), a provider of cloud computing services, to support AWS’s growing global ecosystem of cloud computing companies. Alongside this, C5 Cloud Partners will now invest venture capital and private equity in global cloud computing companies, with a particular focus on independent software vendors creating cloud-focused applications, professional services companies enabling enterprises and governments to transition workloads into the cloud, and “disruptors” leveraging the power of cloud-based infrastructure to scale quickly and cost-effectively.
Public cloud spending is estimated escalate quickly. In MENA and Sub-Saharan Africa spend is amongst the highest rate globally, with in excess of 19 per cent CAGR through to 2020. These regions are currently accelerating from a low user base to add over USD1 billion annual spending.
Elsewhere, Eastern Europe is forecast to grow at 20 per cent and Western Europe is forecast to grow at a slower rate (circa 15 per cent). Western Europe is a large market (USD38 billion in 2015) and accelerating adoption will ensure existing AWS infrastructure achieves higher capacity utilisation. Growth in the North American market is projected to be 17 per cent on a base of USD105 billion in 2015.
Battisti says: “The sheer speed of innovation and business migration to the cloud is breath-taking. Companies are now considering when, not if, they will be putting their core IT systems onto the cloud. C5's focused approach and strategic relationships ideally positions us to identify and build the companies driving disruption in the segment. I am very excited to be joining C5 where I will leverage my experience in identifying and investing in truly disruptive companies and assisting entrepreneurs to make the right decision to grow their businesses. ”
Daniel Freeman, chief investment officer of C5 Capital, says: “Although cloud is a global phenomenon the growth of public cloud is driven by rapidly-growing companies operating locally to support cloud adoption by governments and enterprises. C5’s partnership with AWS has given us tremendous insight into opportunities that exist to fund the next generation of infrastructure-as-a-service partners, cloud-focused security and compliance specialists, and cloud-based disruptors. We are very pleased to have appointed Marcos to lead the new venture, as he brings to C5 a wealth of technology experience and a successful investment track record. Marcos and his team have already been identifying exciting prospects for their initial investments.”
Battisti will begin his duties in September 2016. Marketing activities for C5 Cloud Partners will begin in October 2015.
