Private equity firm takes stake in Nottingham tech business

Private equity firm NgCapital has taken a stake in Nottingham-based SMS services firm Esendex.

The value of the deal is undisclosed.

Founded in 2001, Esendex provides messaging solutions to over 13,000 SMEs and corporate customers and employs over 140 staff.

Esendex recently acquired SMSpubli, a leading supplier of business messaging services in Spain.

Esendex and SMSpubli will combine with Mobyt SpA and SMSenvoi, existing HgCapital portfolio companies, which provide similar business messaging solutions in Italy and France.

The combined group will generate more than €75m of revenue and will be led by existing Esendex chief executive, Geoff Love.

Love said: “This is an exciting time for mobile business messaging and the combination of these four strong businesses creates a European heavyweight in application-to-person communications. With around 200 staff and 25,000 customers, sending some two billion messages a year, we are extremely well-positioned to take this fast-growing industry forward. With HgCapital’s backing for further acquisitions, as well as continuing strong organic growth, we look forward to helping even more businesses transform their communications with their customers and staff.”

David Issott, a partner in the HgCapital Mercury team, said. “We are delighted to be partnering with Geoff Love, as well as the entire management team and staff at Esendex, Mobyt, SMSpubli and SMSEnvoi.com for the next phase of their journey. We are very excited to be backing this opportunity to create a leading European champion in business messaging. We will immediately look to invest further behind the group to accelerate its growth, both organically and through further acquisitions, and we will also seek to intensify the pace of technology and product development to support the group’s customers in their deployment of high value mission critical use cases.”