Each year, while our corporate team releases its stats on capital raising deals and sums involved, the wallflowers of Kindrik Partners (aka the commercial team) simply do what they always have done – getting on with the job.

But sometimes, enough is enough – because we don’t think the commercial team’s 2016 was too shabby either.

In 2016, the Kindrik Partners commercial team helped our clients finalise around 400 commercial transactions in more than 24 countries around the globe.  Here’s a few titbits as they reflect on the year.

• we put in place close to 50 in-market distribution arrangements (including resale, agency, and OEM) for clients in 6 different continents – we haven’t swung a deal in Antarctica yet but still dream of a grand slam (and we confirm that we are available to act for either the Emperor Penguins or Bluebird as required)
• the growth of the cloud and as a service market continues – while we’ve worked on more traditional licenses than SaaS offerings in 2016 (with a ratio of 3:2), we think this gap will close in 2017, with SaaS possibly outstripping more traditional offerings
• we’ve advised on over 80 major project deals that have resulted in our clients introducing their offerings to a range of institutional and government customers internationally.

We think these figures reflect the success that the NZ tech sector is having, particularly in the export of their products and services offshore.  These businesses understand the tensions and issues they face breaking into new markets and are looking to partner with local businesses who are better equipped to help them succeed in that market.

Not only that – securing a contract with a large customer used to be a major hurdle for any NZ tech company.  The number of deals we’ve worked on shows these customers understand the quality and maturity of NZ tech businesses and want to do business with them.  It’s great to see.

This is the first year we’ve looked at our commercial transaction stats.  We’re looking forward to next year when we can provide a better comparison of what is happening in the market based on the trends we’re seeing.