Voxpro continues expansion with 500 Georgia jobs

Global business outsourcing company Voxpro wants to establish itself as “one of the biggest employers” in the area of Athens, Georgia, after announcing plans to create 500 jobs in the city over the next four years.

The Cork-headquartered company, founded by husband and wife team Dan and Linda Kiely, has seen rapid growth in recent years and tasted significant success with its US expansion strategy with a sales and marketing office in New York and a much larger operation in Folsom, California.

Now Voxpro is expanding into Georgia in an attempt to replicate the formula of setting up shop close to a major tech hub but still far enough away to avail of a lower cost base.

“Our West Coast strategy has really paid off,” said CEO and co-founder Mr Kiely.

“We’ve won a lot of new contracts and that’s because of the proximity to Silicon Valley. As for Athens, it’s about 50 minutes from Atlanta which is one of the biggest airports in the world but also you’ve got a lot of tech companies based in Atlanta that will be able to get down to this new centre in 50 minutes.

“It’s an amazing university town with a huge graduate pool to be able to tap into so what we will be basically doing is trying to attract in the graduates when they graduate from the university and want to base themselves in Athens which is an absolutely beautiful town.

"We’re using the same model as we did in the west coast: we’re going to build out something really cool.

“We want to make it the most coveted place in Athens for graduates to work in.”

Voxpro will invest $4m (€3.57m) in a new centre of excellence in the city which will house 500 staff by 2020.

Mr Kiely also paid tribute to the “amazing” buy-in the company has received locally from authorities who were proactive in helping Voxpro set up “with ease”.

The new centre of excellence comes hot on the heels of 450 more roles at its Folsom base in California, which were announced in March.

Another motive for setting up in Athens was having “first-mover advantage” in attracting local tech talent to work with Voxpro.

Voxpro’s clients include some of the largest names in technology, including Google, Airbnb, and Nest.