Paris, 31 May 2019- Ardian, a world-leading private investment house, announced today that it has taken a minority stake in Uptoo, the leading sales representative recruitment platform in France. Ardian’s investment will help support and accelerate Uptoo’s growth, particularly through external growth opportunities.

In 10 years, Uptoo has established itself as a leading player in the recruitment of sales representatives and sales managers in France. Since 2015, the growth of the company has strongly accelerated and its turnover has tripled.

The diversified service offering of Uptoo, powered by an integrated and collaborative digital platform, provides evaluation, recruitment and training for the best talent in the B2B sector.

Uptoo has more than 3,500 clients across sectors, including companies listed on the CAC 40, SMEs and start-ups. The company also owns “Uptoo Jobs”, the premier French job search website for sales representatives, where more than 300,000 CVs have been uploaded.

It currently has more than 100 employees across four sites in France: in Paris, Lyon, Bordeaux and Nantes. The company has experienced strong growth since its creation, and in 2018 alone, 65,000 new sales representatives registered on the “Uptoo Jobs” platform.

Didier Perraudin, founder and CEO of Uptoo, said: “Our goal is to become the preferred recruitment partner in the French sales representative market. Our mission is to take the hassle out of recruitment by simplifying, securing and accelerating the process for businesses, recruiters and candidates through digital solutions. Recruitment is a traditional business sector and it is yet to reap the full benefits of digital transformation. By working in the fascinating sales representative sector, our aim is to be a ‘scale-up’ in this market.”

Frédéric Quéru, Director of the Ardian Growth team, added: “Beyond the high quality and ambition of Uptoo’s management team, we were struck by the company’s innovative nature, its unique business expertise and digital approach to B2B sales recruitment. We’ve also been impressed by the strong growth experienced by the company over the last couple of years and by the management’s ambition pursuing this path. We are excited to support Uptoo’s development by bringing our own digital expertise and identifying external growth opportunities.”

Uptoo is the top recruiting platform for sales representatives and sales managers across the entire territory, and in all sectors. Uptoo works with a dynamic combination of consultants and digital tools to help companies secure and accelerate their recruiting processes.
Good sales representatives are rare, and a sales disposition cannot be seen on a CV. Uptoo has implemented modern evaluation tools that reveal sales talent. The UptooJobs platform helps analyse the sales disposition of a candidate in real time, to be combined with the data from his/her CV, through a series of online tests and innovative tools.
On a tight market with fierce competition for talent, Uptoo has rolled out a significant set of resources to make the difference on the traditional recruiting market where firms lack candidates, resources, expertise, and digital tools on the sales representative segment.

Key figures:
More than 2,500 recruiting assignments/year
More than 100 employees in Paris, Lyon, Nantes, and Bordeaux
More than 350,000 candidate members of Uptoo Jobs
More than 3,500 clients

Ardian is a world-leading private investment house with assets of US$90bn managed or advised in Europe, the Americas and Asia. The company is majority-owned by its employees. It keeps entrepreneurship at its heart and focuses on delivering excellent investment performance to its global investor base.

Through its commitment to shared outcomes for all stakeholders, Ardian’s activities fuel individual, corporate and economic growth around the world.

Holding close its core values of excellence, loyalty and entrepreneurship, Ardian maintains a truly global network, with 600 employees working from fifteen offices across Europe (Frankfurt, Jersey, London, Luxembourg, Madrid, Milan, Paris and Zurich), the Americas (New York, San Francisco and Santiago) and Asia (Beijing, Singapore, Tokyo and Seoul). It manages funds on behalf of around 880 clients through five pillars of investment expertise: Funds of Funds, Direct Funds, Infrastructure, Real Estate and Private Debt.

Ardian on Twitter @Ardian

Uptoo Legal Advisor: Armand Avocats (Georges Civalleri, Anne Rossi)

Ardian: Frédéric Quéru, Florian Dupont
Ardian Legal Advisor: Hogan Lovells (Stéphane Huten, Ali Chegra, Agathe Faict)
Ardian Tax Advisor: Mamou & Boccara (Laurent Mamou)
Ardian Legal, Social, and Tax Auditor: Hogan Lovells (Stéphane Huten, Ali Chegra, Agathe Faict)
Financial Auditor: Crowe HAF (Olivier Grivillers, Thomas Corbineau, Julien Latrubesse)