A legal battle involving Albuquerque point-of-sale services company Lavu appears to have come to an end.
On Thursday, the company announced a settlement agreement with its former landlord that "provides for the full resolution of the dispute and a release of all claims between the parties," according to Lavu. The news of the settlement signals an end to a lawsuit brought in December 2020 by Albuquerque Plaza Office Investment LLC that sought to remove Lavu from its office space at the U.S. Eagle Building.
The lawsuit stated that Lavu had not paid rent for eight months for the 17,700-square-foot facility, which cost about $32,000 per month. Lavu eventually moved to another office space and admitted to having not paid rent in court.
“We appreciate the efforts of [Heritage Real Estate Company's] Chief Executive Officer Jim Long and President Suzanne Lubar to resolve this matter and to assist Lavu as we successfully navigate the challenges to the restaurant industry brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic," CEO Saleem Khatri said in the July 1 release.
Heritage Real Estate Company is the property manager for Albuquerque Plaza Office Investment LLC.
Business First was unable to reach representatives from Lavu and Heritage for comment. Details of the settlement were not immediately available.
Lavu was at one point on the forefront of the state's efforts to foster a tech startup scene in Albuquerque, receiving a $270,000 Local Economic Development Act (LEDA) incentive award for its expansion into the downtown office space, as well as the expansion of its workforce there. The company provides point-of-sale software and hardware to the restaurant industry, which was ravaged by restrictions put in place to curb the spread of Covid-19.
At the revealing of the facility in January 2019, Mayor Tim Keller said Lavu is "kind of our Microsoft."
But the company was ultimately unable to keep up its end of the bargain, facing a sustained period of layoffs that began as early as 2019. Between July and September of that year, Lavu's full-time headcount at the Albuquerque headquarters declined from 136 to 84, and continued to drop during the pandemic.
In May 2020, the company sent a letter to New Mexico Economic Development Division Director Mark Roper asking that the state forgive financial penalties for not meeting job creation goals of the LEDA agreement — a request the state granted. The penalties, also called clawbacks, could have cost Lavu more than $137,000, according to a Business First review of a Project Participation Agreement between Bernalillo County and Lavu.
Citing the ongoing health crisis, Khatri wrote in the letter that a decline in operating revenue "forced Lavu's board of directors to not only terminate a large portion of our pre-Covid-19 workforce but to also put off indefinitely the hiring of new employees."
As of the end of September 2020, Lavu had 27 full-time employees in Albuquerque, according to the state, and it has since relocated to a smaller office space at 2632 Pennsylvania St. NE in Albuquerque.
Lavu was founded in 2010 by Corey Fiala and Andy Lim, who now leads Albuquerque point-of-sale and online ordering company Addmi Inc. In 2015, Lavu disclosed a $15 million Series A investment round led by Aldrich Capital Partners, an investment firm with a presence in Washington, D.C., and Silicon Valley. The next year, Lim was replaced as CEO by Marc Chesley, who left the post after three months. Ohad Jehassi was then put in charge before Khatri was hired as CEO.
In 2019, Lavu acquired two companies. The first deal was with Shippensburg, Pennsylvania-based MenuDrive, which offers an online ordering system. Lavu then acquired Sourcery, a Bay Area tech company that provides accounts payable software.
Moving forward, Lavu "has no plans to curtail its operations or to discontinue any of its business lines," Khatri told Business First via email in 2020.
