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Treacle gets 25% slice Johannesburg, 28 February 2002 - Private investment fund Treacle Venture Partners has made its second investment in a month, this time snapping up a 25% stake in SourceCode Technology Holdings for R4,3m. Treacle partner Rudolf Pretorius said he had been impressed by SourceCode's software development talent, and believed it would succeed in developing unique software able to attract an international market. The SourceCode founders have already been invited to meet a development team from Microsoft in Seattle. “Microsoft is so impressed by what they have heard about SourceCode from its SA team that they want to talk further,” said Pretorius. “This is encouraging as the local IT industry has not been famous for developing unique new software.” SourceCode is developing workflow and integration software. Its primary product, k2.net, is a toolset to help companies quickly document and re-engineer complicated workflow or software integration issues. It was set up by three partners in 1997 and k2.net was first marketed last year. MD Adriaan van Wyk said SourceCode had established some good reference sites among customers using its software, including Nedbank and Glenrand MIB, and now needed to develop its sales and delivery channel. Treacle is a R245m private fund formed to back promising technology companies. Earlier this month it paid R3,5m for a 22,5% stake in Parsec, which produces embedded circuit boards for the telecommunication and defence industries. The fund has also been stepping up its R25m investment in listed company Datacentrix, buying tranches of is shares on the open market with the goal of acquiring 25%. So far Treacle has invested about R60m of its cash, which was committed by its founding private investors and by Nedcor, Hannover Re, Primedia and Decillion. |
