NewVoiceMedia eyes global domination after $30m boost

Basingstoke Salesforce partner to bolster US presence

Salesforce partner NewVoiceMedia is looking to continue, and possibly accelerate, its 60 per cent annual growth rate in the coming few years thanks to a recent $30m (£20.74m) cash injection.

The Basingstoke firm, which specialises in cloud and telephony solutions, bagged the extra cash from its current investor line-up - Bessemer Venture Partners, Eden Ventures, Highland Capital Partners Europe, Salesforce Ventures and Technology Crossover Ventures - and new face BGF.

Aside from its Hampshire HQ, NewVoiceMedia has a presence in New York and San Francisco as well as in Australia.

In its financial year ending in January 2015, NewVoiceMedia turned over close to £15m - most of which came from the UK. The firm claims to have grown about 60 per cent since then, but has yet to formalise the figures for the year ending last week. Its CFO Guy Sochovsky told CRN that the subscription model the company operates means that new business typically takes a year to have an impact on its accounts.

Sochovsky said that the extra $30m will help the company increase its global footprint.

"We have been expanding and replicating out our technology solution across three continents," he said. "We now have a very robust operational footprint in these places. What we've been doing is pushing the sales and marketing effort behind that geographic expansion.

"What this capital lets us do is very much continue to focus on sales expansion of the business, in particular the North America expansion of the business. The size of the market opportunity we think exists, crudely, in North America, is probably 10 times that which exists for us in any market outside North America."

The latest funding round has seen NewVoiceMedia's key partner Salesforce increase its stake in the company. It initially invested "in a minatory way a couple of rounds back" but has now upped that. Although the new cash "doesn't give them anything close to a majority", it means it will become "a more meaningful stakeholder", Sochovsky said.

But he insisted getting funding from a key partner poses no conflict of interest.

"It's not an issue for us - there is a very clear [line] between us and Salesforce," he said. "There's no governance link which creates any overriding influence for Salesforce. [We] remain entirely autonomous to pursue whatever strategy we feel is most appropriate. There is no controlling right... which gives Salesforce any undue influence over NewVoiceMedia."