Siemens Leads $7.5M Funding Round for IndX
By ANDREW SIMONS
Aliso Viejo’s IndX Software Corp. just got a big backer: Siemens AG.
Siemens Venture Capital, the investment arm of the German technology company, led a $7.5 million investment in IndX late last month.
“We are very lucky to have them,” Matthew Witte, IndX’s chief executive, said of Siemens. “Money is one reason, but by no means the only reason. Our market opportunity is basically the Global 200 now. I couldn’t think of a better investment partner.”
Existing IndX investors MarWit Capital, Excalibur Partners, Sanders Morris Harris and First Analysis also took part in the funding round, the company’s fourth.
IndX’s ties to Siemens go back to 2001, when Witte took the helm of the software developer. Siemens Industrial Solutions and Services group helped IndX implement its software at ExxonMobil Corp. and Saudi Arabian Oil Co.
More deals between IndX and Siemens are on the way. In a month, it’s likely the two will sign a deal in which Siemens will include IndX products in sales pitches to big customers.
Siemens Venture Capital also is looking to get more corporate investors to take stakes in IndX.
“They are committed to bringing in more strategic investors,” Witte said.
The Siemens investment caps two years of change for 7-year-old IndX.
Witte joined IndX after his investment firm, Newport Beach-based MarWit Capital, took a stake in the company. He replaced Dennis Morin,the quirky founder of Wonderware Corp., a maker of industrial process management software that’s now part of Britain’s Invensys PLC. Morin headed IndX for about a year.
Morin, who had been an IndX director since 1999, had hoped to take the company public as he had done with Wonderware nearly eight years ago.
“He was very involved with the company for some time,” Witty said of Morin in an earlier interview. “But this company was very close to not making it.”
IndX’s Wonderware ties go beyond Morin.
Cofounder Michael Gonzalez, the company’s executive vice president of strategy and business development, is a former Wonderware vice president.
Jesse DeMesa, IndX’s development director, played a similar role at Wonderware. Global sales vice president Larry Whelan also worked at Wonderware with a stint in between at Subscriber Computing Inc., now part of Burlington, Mass.-based Lightbridge Inc.
