2021 Year in Review: Tech firms, funds raise record amounts

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Local tech companies have had huge success in attracting funding this year, led by Formstack which landed a $425 million growth investment in November—by far the largest single capital raise by an Indiana-based technology company in the state’s history, according to industry group TechPoint.

In fact, the second and third quarters of 2021 represented the two biggest quarters in terms of funds raised since Indianapolis-based TechPoint began tracking such numbers in 2014. (Formstack’s raise came in the fourth quarter.)

Here are some of the biggest deals of the year:

Marketing tech firm Terminus Software Inc., which is based in Atlanta and has a significant presence in Indianapolis, announced in February that it had raised $90 million in Series C round funding.

Indianapolis-based High Alpha Capital, the investment arm of venture studio High Alpha, announced in March that it had closed a $110 million fund—its largest yet. Then, in October, High Alpha announced it had raised $18 million to seed cloud-based software startups.

Indianapolis-based Encamp announced in April that it had raised $12 million in Series B funding. Encamp makes software that helps customers manage environmental data and compliance documents.

Indianapolis-based Sixty8 Capital, a seed-stage venture capital firm that was founded in 2020 to support Black-, Latino-, female- and LGBTQ-led startups, announced in May that it had secured $20 million for its first fund.

Indianapolis-based Mandolin Software Inc., which offers a platform for live-streamed events, announced in June that it had closed on a $12 million round of Series A funding.

Sharpen, an Indianapolis-based developer of cloud-based customer service software, announced in June that it had secured $14 million in growth capital.

ActiveCampaign announced in June that it had completed a $240 million Series C fundraising round. The company is based in Chicago and opened an office in Indianapolis in 2019.

Indianapolis-based software company Greenlight Guru announced in June that it had received an investment of more than $120 million from JMI Equity, an investment firm with offices in Baltimore and San Diego.

JMI Equity also provided $100 million to Indianapolis-based OnBoard in July. That represented the first major capital raise for OnBoard, which offers a board-management platform for boards of directors at businesses, not-for-profits and other entities.

Tom Mckinney points out how the technology showed the distribution of fertilzers. The yellow represents areas that did not get enough fertilizer. (IBJ photo/Eric Learned)

Ag-tech startup IntelinAir Inc. landed $20 million in Series B funding in September. IntelinAir moved its headquarters to Indianapolis from California over the summer.

Indianapolis-based Allison Transmission Inc. announced in October that it planned to make a $42 million equity investment in Beijing-based Jing-Jin Electric as part of that company’s initial public offering.•

Check out more year-in-review stories from 2021.

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