Main Capital Partners’ push in the UK is picking up pace after the Dutch private equity firm agreed this week to acquire all the operating subsidiaries directly held by Tribal Group, a UK-listed education software and services company trading on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange.
The move follows its acquisition last week of a majority stake in Orgvue, a strategic workforce management software provider, in its first UK platform investment. The Hague-headquartered firm opened a London office in July, adding to global offices in Dusseldorf, Stockholm, Antwerp and Paris. It also has an affiliate office in Boston.
“The UK is one of Europe’s largest and most mature software markets, with a strong base of high-quality, internationally active B2B software companies,” Sjoerd Aarts, managing partner and head of Benelux and UK at Main, told PE Hub.
“For Main, it is a natural next step in our further international expansion. We believe our specialist software focus, deep sector expertise and experience in building international software groups through organic growth and buy-and-build can be highly relevant to ambitious UK founders and management teams.”
The Tribal deal is all-cash and has an enterprise value and equity valuation of approximately £189 million ($255 million; €221 million). Tribal generated revenue of £92.5 million and adjusted EBITDA of £17.5 million in 2025, implying an enterprise value of roughly 10.8x adjusted EBITDA.
Founded in 1999, Tribal employs about 915 professionals and serves more than 660 institutions globally, including over 200 universities, across the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Canada and Asia-Pacific. Its software supports student recruitment and admissions through enrolment, assessment, progression and graduation.
Main and Tribal said the education software market is benefiting from structural growth trends, including migration from legacy systems to cloud-based platforms and increasing regulatory, reporting and automation requirements. Following completion, the companies plan to pursue further acquisitions to broaden their capabilities and geographic reach.
Optimization
Orgvue is a strategic workforce management software provider.
Headquartered in London, with offices across North America, EMEA and APAC, Orgvue supports large global enterprises in designing, planning and optimizing their workforces through its cloud-based platform.
Orgvue serves close to 200 global enterprise customers, including organizations such as HM Government, Mars, Danone and Aviva. The company generates “well over” £50 million in annual revenues, the majority of which are recurring, said Aarts.
Orgvue’s next phase of growth will focus on accelerating product innovation, further expanding internationally, deepening penetration within the enterprise customer base and pursuing selective strategic add-on acquisitions to broaden the company’s product capabilities and widen its international market reach.
Read the full interview with Aarts for more on the value creation plan.