Since early 2005, here at Ringover we’ve been driven by one simple goal: simplifying business telephony and boosting team productivity on a day-to-day basis. Today, we’re celebrating a milestone, and are delighted to announce that only three years after launching our Ringover solution in France, we’ve raised our first capital injection. For us, for our teams, and for our customers, this is an important step. We’d like to take a moment to look back on our journey, which has been led by Jean Samuel and Renaud over the past 16 years, and to look forward, to our ambitions for the coming month!
Simplifying communications for SMEs
In 2002, drawn together by a shared passion for telecommunication, our President, Jean-Samuel Najnudel, and our Chief Executive, Renaud Charvet, joined forces and set out to simplify the world of telecoms, offering Cloud-based value-added services. Both businesses and individuals alike have trusted in the services provided by BJT Partners (Standard Facile, SoConference, MonFax, etc.).
In 2015, Ludovic Rateau, our Chief Technical Officier, suggested Renaud and Jean-Samuel develop a new generation business telephony solution. The emergence of WebRTC technology, along with the fact that at that time, business telephony wasn’t keeping up with the constantly evolving ways of working (remote working, mobility, co-working, freelance work, etc.), inspired the launch of a new project : Ringover.
“Jean-Samuel and Renaud entrusted me with the creation of an initial version, with the assistance of 2 web developers. Ringover came together in a matter of weeks. Today, there are over 30 of us developing the solution.” explains Ludovic. “We work closely with our customers to make sure that we’re building a solution that suits their needs, as well as the needs created by the current market: statistics, integration into trade tools, automation, webhooks, etc. Ever since we released the solution in 2018, our customers haven’t looked back, and neither have we!”
For this A-Series, we welcomed investment, from Expedition Growth Capital, a British capital-development company. Expedition Growth Capital is a partner that brings great experience to the table, as well as a solidarity with ambitious European founders, who have typically chosen to develop their business away from the pressures of risk capital.
“This is Expedition Growth Capital’s first investment, a rapidly expanding growth fund, specializing in business software. We were impressed by the value customers gained from the Ringover platform, as well as by the swift uptake by a growing number of large businesses. We’re delighted that the Ringover team have chosen Expedition Growth Capital as their first external investor, and we’re looking forward to playing a part in their continuing success.” declared Oliver Thomas, the founder and partner of Expedition Growth Capital.
“This is an extraordinary opportunity for us, to benefit from the support of an investor with international outreach, who has already accompanied other companies in their success. The cards are in our hands for our mission of becoming a major player in the world of business communications, providing an all-in-one solution for SMEs around the globe. The past year has shown us that businesses today need solutions that can evolve, that can be accessed whenever and wherever needed, and that can be integrated into their trade tools to boost productivity.” concludes Renaud.
But, in concrete terms, what does this 10-million-euro investment mean for us?
Accelerating our growth both in France and overseas
In January 2018, Ringover was launched in France, and our first international customers joined our family in the following months, along with the creation of a department dedicated to international business. We’re happy to say that, today, 10,000 start-ups and SMEs have chosen us as their solution for simplifying their business telephony and boosting productivity amongst their customer service and sales teams. Since January 2018, our revenues have seen an increase of 800%. Any predictions for 2021?
The sky's the limit, for us here at Ringover! In 2021, we plan on continuing our growth and developing across new markets. We’ll be focusing on developing our network of European partners, too. In 2020, we recruited 80 partners, and this is only the beginning. We have huge ambitions not only for France, but for the United Kingdom, Spain and the USA.
Offering innovative features through a simplified interface
We’re not just a software and application publisher, we’re also a telecom operator. How many calls do we handle a day, you ask? “Well over 130,000 calls a day, and more than 550,000 of call minutes pass through our telecom infrastructure each day! We want to expand our infrastructure to service not only our neighbouring customers here in Europe, but also our State-side customers, in order to ensure an extremely secure guarantee of service quality. This is what sets us apart from our competitors.” adds Jean-Samuel.
So, in 2021, we won’t lose our founding DNA, BJT partners, which has evolved into Ringover Group. Simplicity and efficiency will remain at the heart of our ethos. We have a lot of surprises in store: a new interface, mobile app renovations, over 20 new integrations into CRM and Helpdesk software.Shhhh… we’ve already said too much!
Not to mention the new talent joining the family!
Seeing as all of this couldn’t happen without the joint efforts of our teams, we’ll be recruiting even more talent in 2021! From our humble beginnings, with just 15 of us setting out initially on this venture, there are now 115 of us, and we’re working towards increasing that to 200 by the end of the year! We particularly want to reinforce our local teams, who play a key role in developing our position in new markets in the UK and Spain. So, feel free to share our job offers with your networks!
Finally, we want to take the time to thank all of those who support us, who trust us, and who have joined us along the way for this adventure. You can be sure that the next few months will hold some big, positive changes for us, and this is only the beginning...
