NitroSell considers €2m funding for US expansion

17th February 2008

Software-as-a-service (SAAS) provider NitroSell, which enables retailers to integrate their traditional shop-based sales channel with a web store, is closing a funding round of almost €600,000 and is considering launching a further €2 million funding round later this year.

Tom Keane, president and co-founder of NitroSell, said the firm was considering additional funding due to its ‘‘emerging revenues and its fast approaching break-even point’’.

‘‘This money would be used to really tap into the big demand that now clearly exists in the United States for our products and services. The money would be used for demand generation marketing and to add staff, plus additional offices in more US cities,” said Keane.

He said the firm intended to double staff to about 40 by year end. “The focus is on the United States for the next 12 months, with a secondary market in Britain,” he said. Thereafter, the firm will begin to concentrate its efforts further afield, looking at Latin America, mainland Europe, Australia and Asia. NitroSell is currently in the process of closing a funding round of almost €600,000 via the Business Expansion Scheme (BES).

“Prior to the €590,000, we had raised 85 per cent of what we needed to break even,” said Keane. He added: “Based on the success we are seeing, our strategy is to raise money only in small chunks as we need it. This protects the equity of our early investors. They are the ones who understood our vision and backed it, so they deserve to reap the maximum rewards.”

Last year, NitroSell completed a €1.5 million funding round, which brought to more than €3.8 million the total amount raised by the company since its establishment in 2005. Some €750,000 of this came from venture capital firm Enterprise Equity, while the remainder came from the BES.

Keane said the firm, which operates via a network of 244 resellers, had enabled 800 retail businesses to add a web-based sales channel to date. Its clients had 1.7 million unique visits in January and visitors perused 19.6 million product pages.

Keane estimated that the web stores of all of NitroSell’s clients are collectively getting 400 million hits per month from a registered number of users that recently broke the one million mark. ‘‘These figures show the underlying value of NitroSell,” he said.

NitroSell’s chief executive officer, Charles Garvey, was formerly chief executive of Horizon Technology. Also featuring on NitroSell’s board are chairman Ron Downey, the founder of Kindle Banking and financial software company CR2, and non-executive director Colin Newman, cofounder of Iona Technologies.

It has its headquarters in Cork, but also has offices in the United States and Britain.

The Sunday Business Post