Ardian increases its stake in Uptoo, to position it as the French leader in sales enablement

Ardian, a world leading private investment house, has significantly reinvested in Uptoo, a leading player specializing in recruitment, consulting and training of salespeople. The objective of this reinvestment is to support Uptoo's growth and diversification of its activities. As part of this transaction, Uptoo's managers will remain majority shareholders of the company.

The company, founded in 2005, aims to become the leading partner for supporting sales enablement of companies in France. Since Ardian Growth’s initial investment in 2019, Uptoo has largely outperformed the market, with growth exceeding expectations, and showing resilience throughout the Covid-19 crisis. The company has increased its turnover fourfold since 2015, which is now expected to exceed €30M this year. The company has more than doubled its workforce, from 110 employees in 2019 to 250 today. Uptoo has also developed a fully integrated and highly digitalized consulting and training offer over the past three years.

Uptoo now has more than 7,000 clients, including SMBs, start-ups and large enterprises (public companies). Uptoo helps them strengthen their sales organization through the recruitment and training of sales staff and the modernization of sales methods and tools, therefore significantly and rapidly improving their market positions.

"We are very proud to have supported Uptoo in its development over the last three years and are delighted to continue our collaboration with the company’s high quality management team as we pursue further growth. The sales enablement market has a significant growth potential and Uptoo is one of the best positioned to benefit from it. The quality of its teams, strategy, process and digital tools offers Uptoo’s clients a more than ever needed competitive advantage, indistinctively of their sector or profile.” Frederic Quéru, Managing Director within the Ardian Growth Team

"With Ardian’s support, our ambition is to become the market leader in France. Uptoo’s strong performance to-date demonstrated the growth potential in the sales enablement market, which has not yet been fully digitalised. Companies can unlock this growth by recruiting the best talents to boost sales, training and developing the skills of its sales teams over time, establishing or rethinking sales methods and tools, all while using the potential of digital. This new fundraising will give us the resources to continue to develop and to capitalize on our unique digital platform, which allows a real time connection between our consultants, clients and the best sales and management talents.” Didier Perraudin, Founder and CEO, Uptoo