IQCapital portfolio company OneWelcome acquired by Thales for € 100 million
OneWelcome, European leader in Customer Identity & Access Management and IQCapital portfolio company since 2015, is acquired by international defence specialist Thales, for a total consideration of € 100 million. Back in 2015, InnovationQuarter was the first to invest in then Onegini, together with Seed Fund The Hatch Firm. Because we believed in the technology and entrepreneurship of Jeroen Starrenburg and Denis Joannides. And saw Onegini as a welcome addition to Security Delta (HSD). In a major follow up round in 2019, Walvis also joined as an investor, followed last year by the merger with iWelcome to form OneWelcome. Now after almost 7 years our involvement as shareholder from InnovationQuarter ends, but we have been able to help build a successful company that has made the Netherlands and the world a little safer and smarter. OneWelcome’s strong digital identity lifecycle management capabilities will complement Thales’s existing Identity services in order to offer the most comprehensive Identity Platform in the market.
Headquartered in the Netherlands, OneWelcome provides cloud-based customer identity and access management for highly regulated industries, empowering them to securely connect customers as well as business partners to their online services. Currently, OneWelcome protects tens of millions of European identities for lighthouse customers like Malakoff Humanis, PostNL and the European Central Bank. Thales plans to leverage this regional expertise to address the global need for enhanced identity and data privacy management.
Indeed, OneWelcome business will particularly address the increasing need for convenient and secure access, as well as data privacy, which is essential in regulated markets, subject to GDPR compliance for instance. To be noted that one of the key OneWelcome’s expertise is to grant users a greater control of their information and data, across any platform or application as it helps manage their passwords and consent preferences.
With this acquisition, Thales will offer a comprehensive Identity Platform that will allow organisations of all sizes to manage internal and external identities, enabling them to bring new businesses online fast, improving operational efficiency and customer experience along the way, while meeting or exceeding regulatory compliance.
With 100+ employees and customers across Europe, OneWelcome is experiencing strong growth of over 30% year-on-year. OneWelcome will join Thales Digital Identity and Security global business unit. Gartner predicts that by 20231, 72% of organisations will be rolling out a CIAM initiative, versus 40% in 2020.
Danny de Vreeze CEO of OneWelcome said: “Customer Identity – or CIAM – is a solution tailored for any organisation with a digital presence that need to securely manage external identities and provide intuitive access to their online services. We have a state-of-the-art service that is used by European customers to connect and protect millions of users. Our highly motivated team is thrilled to expand our product leadership into new markets using the global reach of Thales.”
Philippe Vallée, Executive Vice-President, Digital Identity and Security at Thales said: “The acquisition of OneWelcome is fully aligned with our expansion strategy within the cybersecurity space. OneWelcome’s talents and expertise in customer identity and access management complements and strengthens our authentication and data privacy portfolio as well as our plan to provide a trusted and frictionless digital experience. Nowadays, as we see a rapid increase in amount of data, cloud migrations, and new compliance mandates, it’s essential to offer secure, adaptive and convenient solutions that help our customers in both private and public sector to classify, protect, and control the access to their sensitive data regardless of where it resides.”
Amée Leferink
