Capzanine is investing alongside the management team in Datawords, the European market leader for multilingual digital production.

Datawords is a localisation company run by the founding shareholders Alexandre Crazover, Didier Rosenberg, Kayo Hattori and Stanislas de Nervo. It specialises in translating and adapting websites and digital content into foreign languages. The company also offers services such as multilingual digital production for advertising banners, multilingual referencing and international e-reputation management.

Datawords has grown rapidly since its creation in 2000, with over €16 million in sales forecast for 2011. Its production teams include people of some 30 different nationalities, working out of offices in Paris and Hong Kong and supported by a body of experts composed of 1,200 professional translators, technical units and multilingual graphic designers. Since the outset, Datawords’ high-quality services have secured it regular business with major international brands, and its current client base includes over 600 companies. Its international, multicultural dimension has enabled it to dominate a fragmented market where quality is crucial when it comes to gaining customer loyalty.

Capzanine is structuring this new OBO deal as a ‘one-stop-shop’ investment combining equity and mezzanine finance. Taking over from Cathay Capital PE, the Fund will seek to maintain the company’s strategy and help the four shareholders grow the business.

This partnership will provide Datawords with the means to pursue its ambitious development projects, which include diversifying its target business sectors, developing additional expertise, enhancing existing offerings and helping Asian businesses develop in Europe.

“Datawords’ management team has successfully created a unique, innovative company with an offering that is perfectly geared to the needs of large clients. Catering for companies’ growing internationalisation, the proliferation of subsidiaries and the need of head offices to control the content and costs of their international campaigns is just one of its strengths. Moreover, given the increasing need to adapt products to local markets, we are convinced that localisation at a global level is a key area for companies’ development,” explains David Hoppenot , Capzanine's co-founder and managing partner.

Datawords’ chairman Alexandre Crazover commented: “Following an initial constructive partnership with Cathay Capital, Capzanine offered a convincing solution for our plan to base our development around high-quality services (our ISO 9001 certification being a precious asset to our mind) and the separation of our communications businesses with a view to tailoring our offering to the needs of large companies: under this arrangement, the communications agencies will do the creative work, leaving Datawords to handle multilingual production. In our view, Capzanine’s entrepreneurial approach makes it the right partner to enable us to continue expanding this multilingual services strategy.”