Mergers and Acquisitions, MSP, Vertical markets

Enlightenment Capital Invests In 1901 Group; MSP Seeks Acquisitions

Sonu Singh
Sonu Singh

Enlightenment Capital, a private equity firm, has invested in 1901 Group, an MSP for government and private sector customers. It sounds like 1901 Group will use the money to fund organic growth -- and potential acquisitions. Financial terms were not disclosed.

1901 Group (Reston, Virginia) specializes in IT as a service and helps customers to migrate applications to public- or private cloud-based environments. The company claims to have some sort of secret sauce involving a heavy emphasis on employee training, quality and automation. Moreover, 1901 has a FedRAMP-authorized operating platform plus a 24x7 operations center in Virginia that's CMMI Level 3 and ISO 9001 certified.

1901 Group's name comes from the year that assembly lines were invented. The idea is to apply assembly-line best practices  to the IT services market -- driving up productivity and driving down defects.

“We’ve built a managed service model that re-imagines how complex IT services are delivered, maintained, and optimized," said Sonu Singh, CEO of 1901 Group, in a prepared statement. "The investment from and strategic support of Enlightenment Capital will allow us to continue to invest in our delivery model and grow our business, both organically and through acquisition."

Sinhg further describes 1901 Group's business strategy in this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-TU2KOLG8jY&t=16m37s

Who Is Enlightenment Capital?

Enlightenment Capital is a private equity firm in Washington, D.C., that provides senior debt, mezzanine debt, and minority equity to middle market companies in the Aerospace, Defense & Government (ADG) sector. The company did not disclose whether it now owns a majority or minority stake in 1901 Group.

This is Enlightenment Capital's second IT-oriented investment in recent months. The company made a strategic investment in Telos Corp. in January 2017. Telos develops and maintains continuous security solutions. Like 1901 Group, Telos is now in the market to make acquisitions.

Joe Panettieri

Joe Panettieri is co-founder & editorial director of MSSP Alert and ChannelE2E, the two leading news & analysis sites for managed service providers in the cybersecurity market.