Middle market private equity firm One Equity Partners’ (OEP) portfolio company, Orion Business Innovation (Orion), has combined with MERA, an outsourced product development business headquartered in Switzerland.
OEP is making a significant investment in MERA to support the transaction.
MERA provides customised solutions and software services, including outsourced product development, software and architecture design, implementation and integration, and project management, to blue chip clients internationally. The company has a 30-year history of providing highly technical solutions in the telecommunications and telecom equipment, industrial automation, automotive and transportation, and financial technology industries. MERA has over 1,200 software engineers in off-shore and near-shore delivery centres in Eastern Europe, as well as offices in Santa Clara, Austin, and Zurich.
The combination of Orion and MERA strengthens the combined platform’s technological capabilities, global delivery, and domain expertise. Together, Orion and MERA’s approximately 3,000 dedicated associates located across three continents, will allow the combined firm to provide highly flexible global delivery options to their customers with deep domain expertise across several sectors.
The senior leadership of MERA will remain as key members of the combined platform’s management team. Alex Bogachek and Igor Piruyan, CEO and COO respectively of MERA, will retain their current roles leading MERA. Additionally, MERA’s co-founder Konstantin Nikashov has joined the advisory board of Orion. Raj Patil, CEO of Orion, will remain as CEO of Orion and of the combined platform. Senior members of MERA’s leadership team have also invested alongside OEP and Orion management in the combined company.
“Orion shares MERA’s values and commitment to developing innovative, industry-leading products and providing best-in-class services that customers have come to expect of both our businesses,” says Alex Bogachek, CEO of MERA. “Their core competency in enabling operational efficiencies through enterprise automation solutions aligns well with our outsourced product development capabilities, enabling us to provide a large number of solutions and services for customers across our joint geographies.”
“The combination with MERA represents the next chapter in our strategic growth plan as we continue to diversify and strengthen our company with solutions that take our customers’ businesses to the next level,” says Raj Patil, CEO of Orion and of the combined firm. “MERA’s legacy of excellent service in the communications and telecommunications industries, and award-winning product development experience are highly complementary to Orion’s digital transformation platform. We are excited about the new capabilities MERA can offer to our customers and look forward to working with MERA’s team to find opportunities to grow further.”
Orion provides digital transformation services to large enterprise customers including businesses primarily in the financial and professional services, telecommunications, sports and entertainment, healthcare and industrial sectors.
“OEP is pleased to partner with the talented leadership of MERA and Orion to create this high growth company with exceptional technical capabilities,” says Chip Schorr, Senior Managing Director, OEP. “Building category leaders is the investment mission of One Equity Partners and we are excited to sponsor this combination.”
OEP has proven experience investing and building market-leading technology-enabled businesses through strategic combinations, including recent examples such as Rizing, a leading provider of SAP functional and technical consulting services, and Lutech, a leading Italian IT system integration and solutions firm.
“We are excited to once again bring two growing technology services businesses with experienced management teams together to expand their global reach, delivery capabilities, and diversify their customer bases,” says Carlo Padovano, Managing Director, OEP. “The combined firm can provide a greater variety of differentiated services to its clients in the fast-growing digital transformation and outsourced application development sectors.”
