Mu Sigma is a professional services firm that provides its clients with a competitive edge by helping them to institutionalize decision support and analytics within their organizations in a sustainable, recurring manner using a global delivery model. Mu Sigma works with market-leading companies across multiple verticals, solving high-impact business problems in the areas of Marketing, Supply Chain and Risk Analytics. With more than 50 Fortune 500 clients and 1500 analytics professionals, Mu Sigma is a category-defining company that has pioneered a new era in the analytics and decision sciences industry by integrating the disciplines of applied math, business and technology.
Mu Sigma is already profitable and can finance its own operations, but will use the investment funds to accelerate its growth in the burgeoning analytics services market. A portion of the proceeds are being used to purchase shares held by existing shareholders, all of whom will continue to have stakes in the company. The investment represents a broadening of the firm's shareholder support and a strong endorsement by General Atlantic, one of the world's largest growth equity investors with a successful 31-year track record.
Earlier this year, global consulting firm McKinsey issued a research report estimating that the universe of digital information will increase another 20-fold by the year 2020. In that same report, McKinsey predicts that in order for businesses to handle an explosion of "Big Data" -- defined as data sets too big to be readily handled by today's database technology -- another 140,000-190,000 deep analytical talent positions need to be created in the coming years1. Mu Sigma is helping to fill that void.
The company has grown rapidly since its founding in 2004; in fact, its 2008-2010 revenue growth of 886 percent earned Mu Sigma a spot in the Inc. 500 list of America's fastest-growing private companies.
"We are excited to partner with the clear market leader in the rapidly emerging field of analytics and decision sciences for large global enterprises," said Bill Ford, CEO of GA, who will be joining the Mu Sigma board. "We have long known and admired Mu Sigma for the strength of its management team and its innovative service offerings. The Big Data phenomenon is creating huge challenges for corporations as they look to better harness information to accelerate and improve decision making, and Mu Sigma is an excellent antidote. We look forward to working together in continuing to build a globally pre-eminent analytics company."
Shailendra Singh, Managing Director at Sequoia Capital, said, "Mu Sigma has world-class analytics capabilities, a unique operating model and a refreshing and unconventional culture that continues to create tremendous client impact for dozens of Fortune 500 companies. We are delighted to back the company in its mission to institutionalize decision sciences in corporations."
"General Atlantic brings a global perspective, experience and relationships that will be very valuable to us as we continue our growth globally," said Dhiraj Rajaram, Founder and CEO of Mu Sigma. "We greatly value the network and expertise GA will add and look forward to a strong partnership. With General Atlantic and Sequoia Capital as investors, we now have both a world-class private-equity firm and a world-class venture capital firm behind us. Their experience and connections will be extremely valuable as we take Mu Sigma to the next stage of growth."
Since its founding in 1980, General Atlantic has been an active investor in business services companies globally. Current business services sector investments include TASC, QTS, exp, TriNet, Genpact and ServiceSource. In addition to business services, GA focuses on providing growth equity globally to leading businesses in the following sectors: healthcare; energy and resources; financial services; Internet and technology; and emerging markets consumer.
About General Atlantic
General Atlantic is a leading global growth equity firm providing capital and strategic support for growth companies. GA combines a collaborative global approach, sector specific expertise, long-term investment horizon and a deep understanding of growth drivers to partner with great management and build exceptional businesses worldwide. Established in 1980, GA manages $17 billion in capital and has more than 75 investment professionals based in Greenwich, New York, Palo Alto, London, Düsseldorf, Hong Kong, Beijing, Mumbai and São Paulo. For further information and a listing of GA's public and private portfolio companies see www.generalatlantic.com.
About Sequoia Capital
Sequoia Capital works with founders of startups who want to turn business ideas into enduring companies. As the "Entrepreneurs Behind the Entrepreneurs," Sequoia Capital has partnered with innovators such as Steve Jobs of Apple Computer, Larry Ellison of Oracle, Bob Swanson of Linear Technology, Sandy Lerner and Len Bozack of Cisco Systems, Dan Warmenhoven of NetApp, Jerry Yang and David Filo of Yahoo!, Jen-Hsun Huang of NVIDIA, Michael Marks of Flextronics, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen of YouTube, Sujal Patel of Isilon Networks, Keerti Melkote and Dominic Orr of Aruba Networks, Tony Hsieh of Zappos, Omar Hamoui of Admob, Steve Streit of Green Dot, Reid Hoffman and Jeff Weiner of LinkedIn, and Matt Tucker, Bill Lynch and Tony Zingale of Jive Software. To learn more about Sequoia Capital visit www.sequoiacap.com.
About Mu Sigma
Mu Sigma is headquartered in Chicago, with its main delivery center in Bangalore, India, and is arguably the world's largest pure-play decision sciences and analytics services company. It is a leading provider of decision science and analytics services, helping companies institutionalize data-driven decision making, by integrating the disciplines of business, math, and technology in a sustainable global delivery model. Mu Sigma works with market-leading companies across multiple verticals, solving high-impact business problems in the areas of Marketing, Supply Chain and Risk Analytics. With over 50 Fortune 500 clients, including Microsoft and Dell, Mu Sigma has disrupted the analytics industry by integrating the disciplines of business, math and technology in a sustainable global delivery model. Further, analytical assets developed by Mu Sigma's innovation and development team ensure a competitive edge to clients.
1McKinsey Global Institute, "Big data: the next frontier for innovation, competition and productivity," May 2011
Sourced From: Mu Sigma Business Solutions Pvt Ltd
