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Software as a Service (Saas) outfit iVvy is taking its cloud-based event and venue management platform to new heights with a $5 million Series A funding round to accelerate global expansion.
After disrupting the meeting and events industry in Australia and expanding internationally to include 12,000 users in 13 countries, the Gold Coast-headquartered group is pitching to investors as a "scalable tech company that is going to give a good return over the next five years".
iVvy co-founder and CEO Lauren Hall (pictured) tells Business News Australia the capital raising comes after nine years of hard work building exceptional enterprise software, of which her team has built three as well as an aggregator distribution engine.
"This is probably the most exciting point of iIvy's journey, and I think that's because of the fact we're in an inflection point of global scale having now rolled out into another six countries with operations," says Hall, who co-founded iVvy with Bloomtools founder and 2017 Gold Coast Young Entrepreneur Awards Trailblazer James Greig.
"That now will drive enormous value over the next 12 to 24 months in terms of our growth," she says, adding this funding round will be quite different to seed rounds in the past.
The $5 million will not only be spent on expansion into the booming markets of the UK and US, but in Australia, Canada and Asia.
"As we globalise our markets we'll be putting team members up in order to drive sales and operations," she says.
"It's all about digitising the supply chain and putting it online. That's really important it's complex, it's got multiple stakeholders, but what's key to our success is as we've built to scale and seen we are absolutely the disruptor and innovator of the industry.
"That actually allows us to be able to move fairly quickly."
The group claims its business-to-business (B2B) software platform is revolutionising the industry, representing a "trillion dollar market opportunity".
iVvy's initial approach was to reduce the time it takes to organise an event from six weeks to six minutes, but now that has been achieved the business is all about powering real-time online transactions between event organisers, conference centres, hotels, restaurants and even suppliers.
To date, users have included Telstra, Rio Tinto, Fairfax Media, Woolworths, Mantra Hotels, TFE Hotels, Rockpool Dining Group, Rydges and QT Hotels.
"We've received an enormous amount of international interest, with the recent signing of the UK's iconic Twickenham Stadium and Village Hotels Group, as well as the USA's Pacifica Hotels and Treasure Island Casino," says Hall.
"We are providing scalable solutions to problems that have never before been solved within the hospitality industry.
"Not only are we seeking to fund new customer acquisition in these territories, but we're also striving for the affordability to better service our existing clients through enhancements in our software developments."
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