Pictured L-R: Oni Chukwu, CEO of Aventri, and Ivan Lazarev, CEO of ITN
Leading event management software company Aventri (former etouches) has announced the acquisition of ITN International, the industry leader in NFC, mobile and cloud-based technology. With the acquisition of ITN, and its entire global team, Aventri is set to broaden its current onsite technology and service offerings, allowing the company to expand its global reach and the events that they support.
ITN serves event producers around the globe by combining its innovative technology with personalized professional services to optimize events and deliver actionable data. As a full-service organization, ITN provides solutions for online technology, onsite services, reporting and analytics, and innovative NFC and RFID badging.
Their product set includes an online registration system with speaker management, agenda builder, session scheduling and more; onsite services include NFC badges, check-in stations, lead retrieval, apps, RFID scanning and more; and data visualization tools that provide advanced reporting and analytics around registration and all badge activity and scans.
The acquisition of ITN will bring Aventri’s total number of employees to more than 375, and add five new global offices in North America, the United Kingdom and Asia Pacific. Servicing annually more than 125 events, 10,000 exhibitors and 1.5 million attendees, ITN will expand Aventri’s global customer base and allow the organization to provide the most powerful end-to-end event solution on the market for SMBs and enterprise corporations.
“The acquisition of ITN as a global provider of cloud-based event management solutions is a major growth opportunity for Aventri,” says Oni Chukwu, CEO of Aventri. “With this acquisition, Aventri will significantly extend the mission-critical technology solutions it offers enterprise customers which they need to execute exceptional, profitable events worldwide. We’re especially thrilled to be having such an extremely talented and innovative group from ITN joining the Aventri team.”
This is the fourth acquisition Aventri has made in the past three years, and it follows their recent rebrand and the majority investment by private equity firm HGGC. These major advancements continue to position them as the fastest-growing player in the $6 billion EMS industry, having executed more than 300,000 successful events worldwide for global enterprises like Dell, Mary Kay and Amway.
“HGGC chose to invest in Aventri because we believed in their team and their dedication to offering the market a data-driven platform to grow an organization’s revenue around events,” says Steve Young, co-founder and managing director of HGGC. “The decision to bring ITN into the fold will only accelerate Aventri’s growth over the competition with even more innovation to gather data and drive growth around events.”
The acquisition of ITN supports Aventri’s growth-focused plan to become the dominant leader in events management software. ITN customers will benefit from cutting-edge solutions and advanced technology to create meaningful connections through events.
“Adding ITN’s solutions to Aventri will allow us to revolutionize how data can be gathered, reported and analyzed, and provide our clients with a more complete package of event services,” says Ivan Lazarev, CEO of ITN. “We believe that the industry will see a quantum leap in analytics with ITN in the Aventri portfolio of comprehensive solutions.”
Co-founded in 1999 by Lazarev, ITN has continued to be a leader in event technology innovation for the last 19 years. Headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, ITN was the first company to bring NFC technology to U.S. tradeshows in 2007.
As part of the acquisition, Lazarev will join the Aventri executive team as the group head of Onsite Services. He is set to lead Aventri’s global strategy around onsite services and technology, while managing the team members who work on onsite services for client events. ITN’s executive team members, COO Spencer Segura, CTO Chris Macleod and CRO Mike Sorgani, will also join Aventri in senior management roles focused on on-site technology.
“Through the years, ITN has developed powerful technology and services for the events industry, however, we have always wanted to find a vehicle that would allow for a broader implementation of our amazing products,” says Lazarev. “Finding Aventri was the perfect fit, not only because of their investors, but also because of their desire to provide an end-to-end, top-of-the-line solution for event data management. We could not be more excited to join forces with Aventri and HGGC. This is a win-win acquisition and we look forward to a brighter future together.”
Aventri is a global leader in cloud-based analytics and data-driven end-to-end event management and venue sourcing solutions. The award-winning, open-source platform delivers innovative technology solutions to streamline the event process, providing real-time data and analytics on event performance, customer engagement and increasing measurable event ROI. Founded in 2008, Aventri has assisted more than 25,000 event professionals in planning, executing and measuring their events. With a focus on event sourcing, registration, marketing, logistics, engagement, mobile and data analytics, the company serves more than 1,300 customers including leading corporations, associations, agencies and educational institutions globally. Headquartered in the U.S., the company also has offices in the U.K., Belgium, Australia, Singapore, India and UAE. Aventri is a portfolio company of private equity firm HGGC. For more info, visit aventri.com.
