Private equity investor Oakley Capital’s Oakley Capital Fund V is investing in Assured Data Protection, a Leeds-based Managed Services Provider (MSP) focused on Backup, Disaster Recovery and Cyber Resiliency as a Service.
Founded in 2016 by serial tech entrepreneur Simon Chappell and four co-founders, Assured uses Rubrik software and Assured’s own proprietary software platform to provide mission-critical backup and disaster recovery services for companies globally.
Assured enhances its customers’ cyber resilience by protecting their data and ensuring business continuity, with near-zero server recovery time in the event of a significant IT failure or cyber-attack.
Assured operates in a high growth segment of the disaster recovery space which is expected to expand almost 5x over the next five years, as companies’ data architecture becomes more complex and as the prevalence and severity of cyber threats grows.
Oakley will support Assured’s management team to capitalise on strong growth in its underlying markets including the US, with a focus on providing the required capital and organisational structures to enable sustained organic growth.
Given Assured’s significant hosting infrastructure, this is also an opportunity to leverage Oakley’s extensive hosting experience. The five co-founders including Simon Chappell will remain invested in Assured and will continue to manage the business.
This will be Oakley’s seventh new investment announced or completed in 2024.
Peter Dubens, Co-Founder and Managing Partner at Oakley Capital, said: “This is a rare opportunity to invest behind a proven team that has built a business that will benefit from several structural tailwinds and has an attractive business model that is differentiated and scalable.
“Assured is an IT services business with strong organic growth and recurring revenues, genuine IP, and led by exceptional founders. We’re pleased to be partnering with Simon and his team as they leverage the significant opportunities in a fast-growing market.”
