Over the course of its 16 years as a growth-stage tech company, Utilant saw its headcount and business grow expansively. It moved to new headquarters in one of Rocco Termini’s Chandler Street developments. And it finally accepted outside investment in 2019, a $7.5 million Series A cash injection.
Now Utilant has come full circle.
The software company, which helps insurance firms with inspections, has been acquired by Majesco, a global insurance-tech firm based in New Jersey.
Utilant founder and CEO Patrick Davis will stay on to lead a new Innovative Data and Analytics business unit, combining Utilant’s technology with Majeseco’s data and analytics solution. As a senior leadership team member, Davis will report to Majesco president and chief product officer Manish Shah.
Majesco will maintain Utilant’s workforce in Buffalo and its Chandler Street headquarters, said Denise Garth, Majesco chief strategy officer.
Those employees will continue to grow Utilant’s core business, hopefully benefiting from being part of a company with complementary service offerings, she said. As the company competes for talent in artificial intelligence and machine learning, Buffalo will be a hub for that kind of work as well.
“With regard to data and analytics, we are looking to build that into a much broader business unit in Majesco,” she said. “Some of those employees will be in Buffalo, some are elsewhere” as the company prioritizes software and engineering talent over location.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Majesco is based in New Jersey but has offices across the United States.
Davis joins a growing list of entrepreneurs whose Buffalo-based startups made it to liquidity events over the past decade.
They range from hundred-million dollar deals to much smaller events, and were started and in many cases led through the exit by Eric Reich and Michael Weisman of Campus Labs (acquired in 2012); Darren Ascone, Sean HusVar and George Chamoun of Synacor (went public in 2012); Ashok Subramanian, Tim Godzich and Alan Cohen of Liazon (acquired in 2013); Rohini Srihari of Content Savvy (acquired in 2014); Raj Suchak of Cloud62 (acquired in 2015); David Hangauer of Athenex (went public in 2017); CUBRC spinout Trove Predictive Data Science (acquired in 2020); Adrian Dayton and ClearView Social (acquired in 2021); and Joseph Neiman, Dan Magnuszewski and Jack Greco of ACV Auctions (went public in 2021).
