Transaction Positions Provider of Unified Translation Services for Next Chapter of Growth and Enhanced Customer Experience
NEW YORK – January 11, 2022 – VSS Capital Partners (“VSS”), a private investment firm investing in the healthcare, business services, and education industries, today announced it has completed a growth investment in GLOBO Language Solutions, LLC (“GLOBO” or “the Company”), a global provider of technology-enabled, on-demand interpretation services. Financial terms of the private transaction were not disclosed.
GLOBO is supported by its global network of more than 4,000 linguists who speak over 250 languages. GLOBO HQ, the Company’s cloud-based proprietary technology platform, provides personalized expertise in translation and streamlined language access to customers in a variety of industry sectors including healthcare (hospital systems, physician practices, and health insurance providers), financial services (insurers, mortgage servicers, and banks), technology, education, and public services. The Company’s services enable organizations to communicate with the over 25 million individuals in the U.S. who are limited English proficient, without the need for specialized equipment.
“GLOBO has an excellent reputation for empowering its customers to effectively and seamlessly manage their complete translation requirements with a unified language solutions platform that enhances the translation experience for all stakeholders,” said David Bainbridge, Managing Director at VSS. “We look forward to working with Founder and CEO Gene Schriver and his team, who have been at the forefront of combining innovative technology, high quality translation and real time data and analytics-based reporting capabilities for more than a decade, while expanding GLOBO’s service offerings further into existing and new end markets.”
Many businesses rely on the GLOBO HQ platform for its easy to use, high quality customer service and multi-channel services platform. The Company’s services include on-demand telephone and video calls, on-site and sign language interpreting, as well as translation of emails, texts and chats – all without the cost or complexity of having these functions in-house. The company also has a full suite of project-based translation and localization services for documents, websites and audio/video content.
“We’re thrilled to have the support of VSS as we continue to expand into new end markets globally, where we are seeing accelerated demand for our services given today’s increasingly remote workforce,” said Schriver, who founded GLOBO in 2010. “VSS shares our vision for improving our technology capabilities and ensuring that everyone – including those with limited English proficiency – receives equal access to essential services regardless of their native tongue,” added Dipak Patel, President and COO.
The growth investment by VSS – a firm with over three decades of experience investing in and building technology-enabled businesses – will be used to pursue additional organic and inorganic growth, expand service offerings into new sectors, and scale up to meet the increased demand for cloud-based language support services.
“We’re excited to share our resources, expertise, and network to support GLOBO to accelerate the growth of its differentiated multilingual platform. We believe that a unified translation platform within this highly fragmented market is critical to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion in society,” added Aditya Govil, a Senior Associate at VSS.
The language translation market totaled $53 billion in 2021, with 40 percent of that in North America, and is expected to increase 7.8 percent annually for the next 5 years, according to industry data.
Delancey Street Partners and Royer Cooper Cohen Braunfeld served as advisors to GLOBO, while Proskauer Rose provided counsel to VSS.
About VSS
Headquartered in New York, VSS is a private investment firm that invests in healthcare, business services and education companies. Since 1987, VSS has partnered with lower middle-market companies, working closely with management teams, to facilitate their next stage of growth. VSS provides capital for growth financings, recapitalizations, strategic acquisitions, and buyouts with the flexibility to invest control or non-control capital, based on the needs and objectives of each company. VSS has managed $4 billion in committed capital across 8 funds and has completed 93 platform investments and over 400 add-on acquisitions. For more information, please visit: www.vss.com.
About GLOBO Language Solutions
GLOBO is a technology-enabled language solutions provider that helps organizations to communicate across 250+ languages, providing robust data and insights through a revolutionary cloud-based platform, GLOBO HQ. GLOBO has been featured on the Inc. 500|5000 for seven consecutive years and ranked in the Top 20 of the 2021 Nimdzi Interpreting Index: Ranking of the Top Interpreting Service Providers. CEO Gene Schriver has been recognized as a regional winner of the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award in Technology, and Nimdzi has featured Schriver as a Top Influencer in Localization. Become a fan of GLOBO on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram.