SR Labs Gets $53M Funding Boost

Low-latency feed handler and co-located market data platform developer SR Labs has opened a new development center in Pune, India to support growing demand from clients in Asia and Europe, and will expand its sales and marketing operations to accelerate growth outside North America, after receiving $53 million in new funding from Insight Venture Partners in return for a "significant interest" in the company. Following the equity stake, Deven Parekh and Martin Angert, managing director and principal at Insight, respectively, will join SR Labs' board of directors.

The deal was brokered by boutique M&A advisory firm Marlin & Associates. Ken Marlin, chief executive of Marlin & Associates, says the company is seeing "considerable interest by both strategics and investors in acquiring or investing in firms such as SR Labs and XSP [whose recent acquisition by SunGard was also brokered by Marlin] that have proprietary technology, and market leadership, as long as they also are growing and profitable. Most of the interest is for transactions with enterprise values in the $50 million to $200 million range."