Clickatell Gets Investment from Pointbreak
May 29, 2001 "Clickatell poised for global growth" Clickatell has secured funding from pointBreak Private Equity, ensuring that they can elevate their business to the next strategic level. They believe that the investment is set to position the brand and their product range in such a way as to ensure that the ongoing globalisation of the business can be sustained, whilst completing development and solidifying the lead they have taken in the wireless communications market through various planned campaigns. It was a difficult road, according to Clickatell, to look for a strategic investment in a time when the markets were anything but positive towards new ventures. Clickatell believes that the fact that their model is so scalable was key to the investment happening at this relatively early stage of their business. "We have a unique revenue model based on actual statistics and sales, with a focus on the generation of positive cash flow and profit," said Pieter de Villiers, Managing Director of Clickatell. "From here it's a case of believing in the business model and the market potential. We are fortunate to have pointBreak as part of the team, because they share the vision and add significant financial expertise to our company. We further welcome their approach of active, strategic involvement." pointBreak Private Equity is located in Cape Town, South Africa, and focuses on investments in high-growth industries and markets, such as wireless communications and integrated messaging. pointBreak is extremely selective in making investments, looking carefully at management, global scalability, revenue models, cash generating ability and product innovation. Like Clickatell, pointBreak believes in the market potential of turnkey wireless communications and believes that Clickatell's product offering is ideally suited to unlock this potential. According to pointBreak's CEO, Rein van Veen, "Clickatell possesses the rare combination of a superb management team with a lot of intellectual capacity and drive, a truly global business model and a unique product offering, making them leaders in their field. They have shown immense tenacity in building their business to its current state and are very focused on delivering cash profits from which to fund the future growth of the business." Clickatell launched the first phase of its offering in November 2000, and by March this year they had international client registrations from businesses, web sites and individuals in 182 countries. Registrations currently exceed 60,000. This first offering enabled businesses to host SMS messaging facilities on their sites, and this gradually grew to a range of products which enables SMS functionality in any shape and form - immediately.
The fact that Clickatell's products are all available at the click of a button is key to their success, ensuring that they make connectivity as easy as possible for the client. This can be seen in their API (Application Programming Interface), which can offer database SMS messaging functionality to any website or business within a few minutes, and is known to be the first and only HTML SMS API in the world!
What is also significant is that Clickatell has achieved the successes to date without any marketing spend. They believe that the innovation underlying their technology, together with the maintenance of a strong on-line brand presence through various cost-free techniques, have secured the numbers they have managed to attain. Clickatell now enters the second phase of their business model, and hopes to increase their global presence exponentially over the next few months. They are also planning to open a European and US office in the near future. Clickatell can currently send SMS messages to more global mobile networks than any other company or network in the world, and their technological advantage over potential competitors is increasing almost by the day. This enables them to effectively retain control over the lion's share of the market in anticipation of the launch of their core products. What these products are, Clickatell and pointBreak would not disclose as yet, but they are confident that it will have a significant impact on direct marketing as a whole, creating a new wireless marketing and communication channel which can be of benefit to any business or web site. With the success that Clickatell has had in the first phase of their business, they believe that the global footprint that they currently have will be the ideal springboard from which to launch their future offerings. They have managed to penetrate specific geographical target areas that they are confident will prove to be important in the near future. Clickatell's next step will be to strengthen their hold in these areas, while at the same time growing their global audience so as to gain as large a share of the market that they have created as possible. Clickatell plans to continue unabatedly with their aggressive approach of gaining market share through product innovation and development, together with well-targeted marketing . They are currently preparing their infrastructure for the wave of traffic that they expect over the next few months.
To learn more, visit http://www.pointbreak.co.za
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