Once For All, a Lyon, France-based publisher of a legal document sharing platform for the construction sector, has been acquired by Fortius, a UK-based enterprise compliance management platform publisher, a portfolio company of PE firm Warburg Pincus.
Emerton Strategy acted as a consultant to Fortius.
NextStage AM announces the sale of Once For All Group, a leading enterprise compliance management platform
After three and a half years of collaboration, NextStage AM sells its stake as part of the takeover of Once For All (OFA) by British actor Fortius, backed by the international fund Warburg Pincus.
Co-founded at the end of 2010 by Renaud Sornin, Attestation Légale, renamed OFA, is a Lyon-based scale-up that has developed a BtoB SaaS for managing business compliance. The collaborative platform thus makes it possible to connect companies with each other, to simplify their daily lives, to secure and optimize relations between contractors and suppliers. Essentially present in the construction market, its historic core business, the group has gradually developed in other related markets such as energy and real estate development.
NextStage AM has been supporting Attestation Légale since March 2018 on the occasion of a development capital fundraising of nearly €4 million. The company then had 70 employees, 23 client companies and generated an Annual Recurring Revenue (ARR) close to €000 million.
During these three and a half years of fruitful collaboration, the group has changed in size, continuing as expected its very strong growth around three pillars: the continuous innovation of its technological core, the development of new solutions meeting the need for increasing equipment of customers and finally the acceleration of its Europeanization. OFA thus created a joint structure in Germany (OFA GmBH) with its partner Zertifizierung Bau in 2018. The group also rolled out its operations in Italy in 2021.
In three and a half years, OFA has more than doubled its ARR and its community of client companies. In addition, the company now has more than a hundred employees mainly located in Lyon.
Present exclusively on the British market, the Fortius group, supported by the international fund Warburg Pincus, acquires the OFA group with the aim of becoming the benchmark player in corporate compliance on a European scale.
« OFA is a great entrepreneurial story for NextStage AM. We are extremely proud to have accompanied Renaud Sornin and Romain Benoit, whose entrepreneurial vision and enthusiasm we have always shared. Since 2018, OFA has changed in size to become the essential reference in its market. The development potential is still very important in this market Océan Bleu », Comments Julien Potier, Partner at NextStage AM.
« The unwavering support of NextStage AM, embodied by Julien Potier, his adherence to our project, our values and his know-how as an entrepreneur-investor have been essential to the development of OFA. During these three and a half years, the authenticity of the relationships developed have been the basis of our growth in France and have enabled us to penetrate the European market. More than ever, our society has solid development prospects ahead of it. Now accompanied by Fortius, this magnificent adventure continues to provide the European construction, real estate, energy and environment sectors with the platform for the secure B2B relationships they expect. says Renaud Sornin, co-founder and president of OFA.
