Callaghan recipient breaks ahead of the cloud-PBX pack

Callaghan recipient Vadacom breaks ahead of the cloud-PBX pack with people, funding and technology

As well as receiving one of the Callaghan New Research and Development (R&D) Growth Grants announced today, NZ cloud phone system provider, Vadacom, has secured $1million investment package and the strategic support of key, high-growth individuals to take its ground-breaking, mobile-friendly business phone system international. Vadacom already delivers a world-class phone system people love to over 500 workplaces across NZ and Australia, including Xero, Colmar Brunton, Glidepath and the Controller and Auditor-General.

Says CTO Igor Portugal, “This technology grant, and our new investment funds, will enable us to take the software international, adding different languages, and video functionality. The grant enables us to keep growing our team of talented NZ developers and take advantage of the proven strong demand for our locally developed technology.”

In September 2014, investors Aaron Ridgway and Lindsay Phillips of Nightingale Partners joined the Vadacom team as CEO and Board Chair, respectively. Ridgway and Phillips collaborated on the NZ cloud-communications success, Datasquirt, growing the company to a $17million sale to Silicon Valley’s LiveOps. Ridgway takes on the CEO position from co-founder of Vadacom, Igor Portugal, who moves into the Chief Technology Officer role.

“Lindsay and I are committing to Vadacom for the long term because we can see the extraordinary potential in the ground-breaking technology Igor and his team have developed. Vadacom’s BuddyTM application gives unprecedented functionality to business users, enabling all staff to see who’s available and transfer calls, from their mobile, tablet or desktop. Vadacom has built a phone system customers love and we’re going to take it to the world,” says Ridgway.

The Vadacom phone system has been designed to make customer and inter-staff communication seamless, improving productivity and increasing the ease of mobile and remote working.

“I can see the strong trend towards mobile business across many of the companies I work with,” says Phillips. “Increasingly, with hot desks and flexible working, companies are questioning why they need clunky desk phones any more. With Vadacom, they don’t.”

Ridgway, Phillips and Portugal are joined on the Board by Vadacom co-founder and Executive Director, Sales, Scott Keon and by LiveOps’ Senior-VP of Engineering, international cloud-communication technology expert, Kieron Lawson.

About

Vadacom was founded in 2005 and became New Zealand’s first SIP Trunks integrator, expanding to become a phone system software development company in 2010. The company provides phone system technology to over 300 New Zealand based business, including the first three clients it ever signed, and has strategic relationships with a number of telcos and ISPs.

Aaron Ridgway’s twenty-plus years' of commercial experience includes founding and growing both cloud contact-centre technology company, Datasquirt and New Zealand’s most successful-independently owned Vodafone mobile dealership, First Mobile Takapuna. Datasquirt was Deloittes 5th fastest growing company in New Zealand in 2005 and Ridgway was NZ Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2007.

Igor Portugal is a co-founder of Vadacom and an experienced technology leader. In 2000 he co-founded Asterisk Ltd, New Zealand's first Linux specialist practice which was sold to Gen-i in 2003.

Lindsay Phillips has been involved in private equity for over 25 years, commencing in 1987 with MJH Nightingale & Co Limited in London/New York and subsequently Australia since 1995. His experience includes seven years with Price Waterhouse and twenty six years in investment banking/private equity in the United Kingdom, Europe, USA and Australia including five years (2007-12) as Managing Director of Lazard Australia Private Equity. Lindsay is currently Managing Director of two investment funds - Phoenix Development Fund and Nightingale Partners - focused on providing patient expansion capital to family companies. He serves as a Director of most of the companies in which the funds are invested.

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