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Camrivox Ltd

Camrivox Ltd (Cambridge, UK), a Unified Communications innovator and developer of Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) software for the SME market, has raised £1.2 million from a consortium of investors. The over-subscribed funding round was led by NESTA Investments and involved existing shareholders, including founding investor and chairman, Dr Phil O’Donovan, and Create Partners. New investors included Bank of Scotland Growth Equity who invested alongside business angel members of Oxford Investment Opportunity Network (OION) under their Co-Investment Programme arrangement.

Camrivox will use the funding to develop its main product, ‘Flexor’, which provides Computer Telephony Integration (CTI) software for Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications in a way that is affordable and easy to implement for small and medium enterprises (SMEs).

Flexor allows the PC and telephone to work in unison so that applications are integrated with phone calls, thus providing a raft of productivity enhancing features to sales staff who gain automatic access to records whilst speaking to customers, can track customer enquiries and generate call reports. To date, the majority of CTI deployments with CRM have been to large businesses and have required significant investment in infrastructure, hardware and software. Camrivox has made CTI software easy to use and cost-effective by creating a package that can be downloaded directly from the web to the PC for the first time, enabling SMEs to benefit from the latest telephony CRM integration systems without the need for significant additional investment or training.

The Company has a range of partners to supply its software to the SME market. Most recently, Camrivox announced that it is joining forces with SNOM Technology AG, a major German IP phone supplier, to provide a web-delivered CTI product for Salesforce users of SNOM’s IP phones. Further applications are already in the pipeline and will be available during the first half of 2008.

Malcolm Wood, CEO of Camrivox, said: “We are delighted to have secured this new investment, which will enable us to ramp up our sales and distribution activity, secure more partnerships and build on our core technologies to deliver new products in the Unified Communications market place. We are pleased that our existing shareholders have continued to back us by re-investing and we welcome on board NESTA, Bank of Scotland Growth Equity and the OION Network investors. We feel sure that this mix of high net worth and institutional investors will provide support for our business over the long term.”

Camrivox is now preparing for the official launch of its software offering with SNOM, at CeBIT - one of the world’s largest ICT exhibitions scheduled to be held on 4 March in Hanover, Germany. This launch will give SNOM’s new and existing users the opportunity to upgrade to the Flexor CTI software on their phones.

Jonathan Kestenbaum, CEO of NESTA, said: “Camrivox offer a clear proposition in the large and growing market for unified communications and we were particularly attracted by the excellent progress the Company has made building relationships with major CRM players and channel partners. It is critical that high potential UK businesses like this have access to the kinds of support and finance they need to succeed.”

Matt Pieterse, an Investor Director and Partner at CREATE Partners, said: “We first invested in Camrivox two years ago during their seed funding round and are pleased to see how much progress the Company has made. Camrivox’s new Flexor CTI software dramatically changes the economic equation for its customers, by delivering a new approach to traditional telephony – increasing choice and helping customers to reduce their costs without ripping out and replacing existing investments. This additional investment, applied with the continued ingenuity and ambition of Camrivox’s management team, will see the Company expand quickly in collaboration with leading industry partners.”

The investment in Camrivox marks the first deal under the Co-Investment Programme recently launched by Bank of Scotland Growth Equity and the OION Network, which enables the Bank to match investments made by OION Network members.

Malcolm Kpedeko, Associate Director of Bank of Scotland Growth Equity, said: “We are delighted to mark the first deal under our Co-Investment Programme by investing alongside the OION Network members into such a high quality company.”

Eileen Modral, Manager of Oxfordshire Investment Opportunity Network (OION), said: “We congratulate Camrivox on securing the investment capital they need to expand. The Company is a pioneer amongst CTI providers in offering an innovative CTI product that can be simply and cost-effectively delivered to the PC. Camrivox has huge potential to build a substantial SME customer base and we will follow their progress with interest.”

Website: www.camrivox.com