Venture capital firm, Kennet Venture Partners Limited, has completed its first round of funding of £3 million in Exony Limited, a UK-based software company that designs integration and reporting products for use in complex contact centres.
Exony will use the capital to expand its current product portfolio by developing additional products that will improve customers’ ability to analyse, integrate and automate elements of complex, distributed contact centres.
Kennet has been working with Exony since August 2002 to help the company realise the potential of its planned new product stream and this investment reflects the success of that relationship. During this pre-investment stage, Kennet worked closely with Exony and its customers, such as Cable and Wireless, NTL and Kingston Communications, to develop and validate an extended product strategy.
Kennet also introduced Jonathan McKay as CEO of Exony. He was formerly vice-President and General Manager of Sun Microsystems Forte tools group, following the acquisition of Forte Software by Sun in 1999.
Exony’s current products include Intelligent Contact Gateway, which links telephony systems and business applications and Intelligent Contact Reporting. This is a contact centre reporting product that provides a consistent user interface to generate analysis and reports, enabling effective management of call centre operations.
The Exony product suite is currently offered within the Cable and Wireless, NTL and Kingston Communications network and provides advanced customer interaction services for many of its large corporate customers. Users of Exony software, include Marks & Spencer, Alliance and Leicester, Norwich Union, Nationwide, Nectar and thetrainline.com (Virgin Trains).
“This is a compelling opportunity to build a business that we know well from a profitable start point,” said David Carratt, managing director of Kennet. “Jonathan joins an excellent management team and will add a high degree of experience and credibility in this fast growing and exciting market.”
Jonathan McKay, CEO of Exony, added: “Kennet is certainly showing confidence in the future by investing in technology of this kind now and its support of Exony is a real endorsement of our offering. The investment will help us to complete our development programme, which in turn will allow us to extend our lead and deliver solutions that meet our ever-changing customer requirements.”
Kennet Venture Partners (www.kennet.com) is a leading European early-stage venture capital firm focused exclusively on the IT, communications and media industries. Kennet Venture Partners places a strong emphasis on investments in networking and communications technologies, semiconductor IP, Internet infrastructure and enterprise software. Kennet Venture Partners acts as manager of Kennet II LP, a Guernsey limited partnership and advisor to Kennet I LP, a Jersey limited partnership. Kennet Venture Partners is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority.