Kennet announces $25M investment in WorldOne

Kennet Partners, the technology growth equity investor, has announced a $25 million investment in WorldOne, a market leader in global healthcare data collection. The financing will be used to accelerate WorldOne's global expansion and to fund continued development of new business lines. Michael Elias, Managing Director at Kennet, will join the Board of Directors of WorldOne.

WorldOne delivers global services to its customers in the healthcare market research sector, delivering access to the worldwide healthcare community. Since its establishment in London in 2000, WorldOne has developed a panel of 500,000 physicians and 200,000 healthcare professionals enabling the company to deliver large-scale projects in 80 countries. The company has greatly expanded its operations from Europe to North America and Asia, providing a true global offering to its customers. WorldOne's international presence, commitment to quality and high level of client satisfaction has led the company to achieve consistently high growth. In 2010, WorldOne completed over 300,000 interviews with medical professionals for almost 2,000 market research projects.

"We have been enormously impressed by WorldOne's growth profile and its dynamic leadership team. They have built a unique global healthcare panel, which is a tremendous asset upon which can be developed a number of exciting new business activities. Our investment in WorldOne is the result of our commitment to backing high growth, founder-led businesses and giving them the means to achieve their full growth potential", said Michael Elias, Managing Director at Kennet.

Peter Kirk, CEO of WorldOne said "Having an investor like Kennet make a $25m commitment is a strong vote of confidence in what we have achieved and where WorldOne is headed. Kennet was an easy choice given its exceptional management team and history of success. WorldOne will benefit on multiple levels from Kennet's investment and involvement. We look forward to the future."