Merger with Teradata fueling Aprimo’s growth

Aprimo Inc. is on pace to grow its work force following the merger announced in January with Dayton, Ohio-based Teradata Corp., said Aprimo President and co-founder Bill Godfrey.

With about 400 employees prior to the $525 million deal, Aprimo was planning to grow that to 500 or more this year. “That remains intact,” Godfrey said Thursday morning following the IBJ's Technology Power Breakfast at the downtown Marriott.

“We will continue to hire right here in Indianapolis,” said Godfrey.

Aprimo is one of the city’s largest and fastest-growing information technology companies, with its marketing software used by such corporate giants as Bank of America and Warner Bros.

While Aprimo fetched what is believed to be the highest sale price ever for a local technology firm, the acquisition also evoked the usual trepidation that the firm might be diminished locally.

“Most typical high-tech acquisitions have followed a course where the brand and employees over time have moved to the background. … That is not the case with Aprimo,” Godfrey said.

That’s because Teradata, the leading software firm for data warehousing solutions, is using Aprimo as the platform for its emerging applications business.
The deal boosted Aprimo’s customers from about 250 to over 500.

 “Our revenue as an Aprimo operation within Teradata has more than doubled,” Godfrey said.

Two years ago Aprimo had revenue in excess of $70 million. “Literally overnight Aprimo has grown,” Godfrey said.

One harder-to-forecast aspect of the deal is how the influx of cash could beget additional tech startups. The sale made millionaires out of a dozen local Aprimo employees and 11 non-employees, such as individual investors.

“I fully expect that at least a percentage of the profits that will be made with the Aprimo acquisition will be reinvested,” Godfrey said, to grow the high-tech “family tree” in Indianapolis. “Certainly with the size of this deal it will add some momentum and some pace [to innovation]."