The cloud telephony firm Blueface will create 80 jobs by 2020 amid plans to expand its global footprint with €10 million in fresh investment from the BDO Development Capital Fund.
The investment is the fund’s biggest to date, and will see BDO Development Capital Fund investment director Anthony O’Driscoll join the Blueface board.
Founded in2004 and headquartered in Dublin, Blueface has developed a proprietary cloud voice platform for businesses.
It incorporates hosted unified communication (UC) functions, ranging from voice, landline and mobile services, to messaging, conferencing and business applications.
The company employs 50 people in Dublin as well as in overseas offices in London and Rome, which opened in 2012 following the acquisition of Italian company Kebu.
Blueface chief executive Alan Foy said the company would expand further into European markets like Germany, France and Spain. It has just opened a New York office to target US sales.
“We’re opening offices intemationaBy and we want to hire people on the ground, primarily in Britain and the US,” said Foy.
“We sell directly to businesses, from SMEs through to enterprise-level operators, but we also sell our products to carriers under whitelabel managed services deals. There’s a huge amount of opportunity in this area in the US, so we need consultative sales people for that, who can manage those relationships over there.”
New roles will also be created in Dublin.
“Most of our European markets would be serviced from Dublin, because our office here is basically our EMEA headquarters,” said Foy.
“We would see it being the global hub of our product development, group marketing and finance.”
The €75 million BDO Development Capital Fund provides development and growth capital for established, mid-sized Irish companies positioned for growth.
Company: Blueface
Done Deal: €10 million in funding
The clincher: "We are backing Blueface’s goal of becoming a significant international player in its chosen market segments” - Andrew Bourg, head of investments, BDO Development Capital Fund
Originally published by the Sunday Business Post
Learn more about the BDO Development Capital Fund.