Credit Suisse's NEXT Investors Backs Pune-Based Sapience Analytics

Pune-based Sapience Analytics, an innovative People Analytics solution company, received a majority investment from Credit Suisse Asset Management’s NEXT Investors. The NEXT investment will be primarily used to accelerate Sapience Analytics’ expansion into the U.S. market. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. “We are seeing rapid growth for Sapience in the US market. We stand to benefit from our relationship with the NEXT team and their rich industry network which will enhance our ability to accelerate further,” said Shirish Deodhar, CEO and Co-Founder of Sapience Analytics, in a press release. “As a result of this investment, our headquarters will be relocated to the U.S., and we will continue to make strong management additions and add experienced board members to help capture a greater share of the large global enterprise market. Sapience is a unique People Analytics solution, and unlike other products, is based on automated capture and inferencing of work trends rather than any external or subjective people data.” Founded in 2009 with the vision to transform people, processes and productivity, Sapience Analytics provides a unique enterprise workforce analytics and efficiency solution. Sapience claims to assist more than 70 major firms boost efficiency in areas such as staffing, workload optimisation, process improvement, robotic process automation, and outsourcing governance. Greg Grimaldi, Portfolio Manager, NEXT Investors at Credit Suisse Asset Management, said, “With operational efficiency and human capital productivity continuing to be a focus for the financial services industry, businesses need to be smarter in how they deploy resources and allocate workflow. Sapience Analytics helps solve a big pain point by empowering large institutions to efficiently manage human capital resources to help optimize work streams across an increasingly disparate workforce made up of permanent staff, third-party vendors, consultants, and contractors.” Joining the Sapience Analytics board of directors are Frank Fanzilli, Senior Advisor to NEXT Investors and former Global CIO at Credit Suisse First Boston; and Greg Grimaldi. As part of this investment, industry veteran Bradley Killinger has also joined as the President of the company, leading the North American business as well as global sales and marketing. His background includes prior leadership positions at IBM, Oracle, Unisys, among other firms. Companies are increasingly turning to technology to help them monitor their employees' work patterns. Earlier this month, it emerged that Barclays has installed devices with heat and motion sensors to track when staffers are at their desks. Barclays insists that it is using the devices to assess office space usage, not spy on workers, while Sapience has also stressed that its technology is not for "policing". Credit Suisse has not said whether it will use the tech itself.