Profile

Founded in 1998, Charlesbank Capital Partners is an established private investment firm with more than $17 billion of cumulative capital raised since inception. The team has a long history of working together, a deep specialization in the middle market and experience investing over multiple business cycles. Known for its consistent, disciplined approach, Charlesbank focuses on several core sectors (technology and technology infrastructure, business and financial services, consumer, healthcare and industrial), with a particular focus on founder-led companies, corporate carve-outs and transformational opportunities. The firm has three complementary strategies (flagship private equity, technology opportunities and opportunistic credit), which collaborate closely. 

The Technology Opportunities team (or Charlesbank Tech) provides a specialized platform geared toward lower middle-market technology investing. Leveraging Charlesbank’s brand and collective insights, the team seeks exceptional management partners—providing operational resources and deep sector knowledge to help companies accelerate growth and drive value creation.

Awards

2023 Top Growth Equity Firms

2023 Top 40 Under 40 Growth Investors, Mayur Desai

2019 Top 25 Business Services Investors, Joshua Klevens

Key People

Darren Battistoni, Managing Director, Technology Opportunities

Darren Battistoni joined Charlesbank in 2018 to launch the firm’s Technology Opportunities strategy. A Managing Director, he helps lead strategy and investments for the team. Darren has over 20 years’ experience investing in enterprise technology. He has led investments in segments such as cloud computing, cybersecurity, fintech, healthcare technology and software. He began his private equity career at Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe in 2004, where he focused on technology investments for over a decade. Darren earned a BS in economics from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

Mayur Desai, Managing Director, Technology Opportunities 

Mayur Desai is a Managing Director at Charlesbank, where he helps lead strategy and investments for the Technology Opportunities team. He initially joined Charlesbank’s Flagship Private Equity team in 2009 before helping launch the firm’s Tech Opportunities strategy in 2019. Mayur has over a decade of technology investing experience, with a focus on growing software companies. He previously worked at Bain & Company, Audax Group and Vector Capital. Mayur earned a BS in physics and a BS in electrical engineering & computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MBA from Harvard Business School.

Hiren Mankodi, Managing Director, Technology Opportunities 

Hiren joined Charlesbank in 2018 to launch the firm’s Technology Opportunities strategy. A Managing Director, he helps lead strategy and investments for the team. He has nearly 25 years of investment experience, with a focus on technology, software and digital media companies. Hiren began his private equity career with Audax Private Equity, where he led investment activity in application software, infrastructure software, technology-enabled services and industrial technology companies. Earlier in his career, he was at Highland Capital Partners, Millennia Partners and Accenture.

Funds Raised

Charlesbank was founded in 1998 after spinning out from Harvard Management Company, where the principals managed the endowment’s direct private equity investments. With more than $17 billion of capital raised since inception, the firm has built a reputation as a respected middle-market private investment firm with a successful track record across multiple business cycles. 

A long-time investor in the technology sector, Charlesbank launched its Technology Opportunities strategy in 2018, with a focus on the lower middle market. Through its first fund, the Tech Opportunities team has invested over $830 million to date in 12 platform investments across its six subsectors. Since closing that fund in 2019, the team has grown from eight to 21 people, in addition to five technology industry advisors* who are well-integrated into the platform.

*These advisors are members of our Portfolio Resources Group (consultants, not employees of the firm).

Include a listing of the firm’s funds raised over the past 10 years with the information below:

Note: Capital amounts include commitments made to all related vehicles, including the General Partner

Key Investments

Cyberbit: Invested in 2019
Sector: Technology, Cybersecurity

Cyberbit is a leading global provider of cyber range training and simulation platforms for cybersecurity professionals. Its software creates the environment of a virtual security operations center (cyber range) used to train against hyper-realistic simulated attacks and is used by leading enterprises, government agencies and others.

DoiT International: Invested in 2019
Sector: Technology, Cloud Computing

DoiT International is a leading provider of cloud cost-management technology and services. The company provides training and support for public cloud workloads that have complex requirements such as real-time data and analytics and machine intelligence. Using machine learning, DoiT’s software platform enables customers to right-size workloads and reduce cloud costs.

PakEnergy: Invested in 2019
Sector: Technology, Application Software

PakEnergy is a leading provider of enterprise resource planning (ERP) and accounting software to the oil and gas industry, including oil and gas operators and midstream companies. PakEnergy’s software is sold via Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and perpetual license models directly to a broad base of more than 1,300 customers, primarily in Texas and other energy-producing states.

Healthcare Fraud Shield: Invested in 2020
Sector: Technology, Healthcare IT

Healthcare Fraud Shield offers innovative fraud, waste and abuse (FWA) solutions to healthcare insurance payers. Its next-generation SaaS platform uses proprietary data, artificial intelligence, rules and algorithms to enable payers to identify FWA claims, driving meaningful cost savings and a high ROI for customers.

Aptean: Invested in 2020
Sector: Technology, Software

Aptean is a leading global provider of mission-critical, industry-specific enterprise resource planning (ERP) software that allows its customers to digitize administrative functions and drive operational efficiency. The company provides ERP solutions tailor-made for industries including food and beverage, distribution and logistics, and industrial machinery. Products include supply chain, compliance, payments, CRM and PLM software offerings.

SOLVE: Invested in 2021
Sector: Technology, Financial Technology

SOLVE is a global industry leader of pre-trade price transparency data in fixed income markets. Leveraging natural language processing, AI and machine learning, SOLVE transforms large volumes of undigestible, unstructured bid-ask data (emails, instant messages, etc.) into clean and navigable structured data for clients. These solutions are deeply integrated into the workflow of blue-chip financial institutions across buy-side, sell-side, market data vendors and evaluated pricing service providers.

Titan Cloud Software: Invested in 2022
Sector: Technology, Application Software

Titan Cloud Software is a premier software platform providing environmental and operational solutions for convenience stores (c-stores), fuel carriers and service providers. Titan provides industry-leading solutions for environmental compliance, fuel analytics and facility management. Its software and solutions help its global customers alleviate environmental risk and optimize the workflow surrounding complex fuel equipment.

ImageQuix: Invested in 2022
Sector: Technology, Application Software

ImageQuix is a leading provider of workflow and ecommerce software for high-volume photography studios, primarily serving schools for annual picture days, sports photos and senior portraits. The company stands out in the market with its ability to enhance the consumer experience and provide a broad assortment of products at competitive prices.

Capital Responsibility

We pride ourselves on being responsible and thoughtful stewards of capital. We believe that the consideration of ESG issues is important to good business and investment practices and that effective ESG management is a critical tool in risk mitigation and value creation for our companies. Through our ESG Policy we commit to: uphold standards of responsible investment and business ethics; enhance ESG management capacity and awareness (ex. through our Annual Survey and follow-up Board discussions); evaluate risk factors for our control/co-control companies and engage with management teams on such issues throughout our ownership; and provide updates on our ESG program. 

As more businesses commit to ESG, we expect it to become increasingly important to the technology industry narrative. In turn, we believe our expertise in software investing equips us to meet society’s ESG challenges and create opportunity in the digital economy. We are proud of the various ways our Technology Opportunities companies incorporate ESG principles into their businesses, continue to innovate and use their tools and reach to build a better future for their customers—and for society overall. 

CEO Reviews

Kate Bolseth, Forta CEO

“The Charlesbank team has been a terrific partner to us as we’ve executed on our vison of creating a leading cybersecurity platform. We tremendously value their judgment, deep cyber expertise and network, strategic support in sourcing and evaluating M&A, and above all, their engagement and approach to partnership.”

Santosh Nanda, PakEnergy CEO

“It has been a real pleasure working with the Charlesbank team. They have been instrumental in helping us execute our acquisition strategy, bring new talent into the organization, and expand our product suite and go-to-market strategy. They are deeply committed to our success, and we view them as a true extension of the Pak team. With the continued support and partnership of Charlesbank, we are excited to take Pak to new heights.”

Vadim Solovey, DoiT International Co-CEO

“Charlesbank has been an incredible partner, especially in helping us navigate the challenges of scaling from a startup with 40 people to a global company with over 600 employees.”

Eugene Grinberg, Solve Co-Founder and CEO

“Charlesbank has been a true partner to SOLVE. Their deep expertise has been instrumental in helping us evaluate and realize multiple acquisitions. Their collaborative approach has significantly enriched our go-to-market strategy while also empowering us to innovate and realize our vision. The team’s extensive experience translates into nuanced advice, balancing solutions for immediate challenges while also giving you visibility for what is around the corner.”

TVN Reddy, Aptean CEO

“Charlesbank has been an excellent partner to Aptean as we execute against our mission to solve tomorrow’s unique challenges today with unrivaled, purpose-built software and superior customer experiences from people who care. The Charlesbank team is of the highest integrity and has been instrumental in supporting our M&A efforts and several other strategic initiatives to drive incremental value.”

The statements and opinions presented above are endorsements or testimonials, as applicable, that have been made by individuals who have existing commercial relationships with Charlesbank. These executives may be investors in one or more private funds advised by Charlesbank. The firm has not provided any cash or non-cash compensation to these individuals for these statements. The above commercial and/or investor relationships create a conflict of interest since the executive may have an incentive to provide a testimonial or endorsement to Charlesbank. These statements describe the testimonial/endorsement provider’s experience with Charlesbank and/or its supervised persons and may not be representative of the experience of others.