Newbay raises €3.2m in funds

NEWBAY Software, a company set up by a former senior executive at Baltimore Technologies, has raised €3.2 million in new funding.

Dublin-based Newbay was set up by ex-Baltimore vice-president Paddy Holohan who raised the money from Benchmark Capital, which is run by the former Esat Digifone boss Barry Maloney.

Mr Maloney will join Newbay as a non-executive director.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Mr Holohan said yesterday that Newbay was profitable and had strong revenue.

“The benchmark funding gives NewBay the necessary resources and momentum to accelerate our growth,” he said.

“It also provides a strong, global endorsement of our business plans for the mobile internet marketplace.”

He said the company, which employs about 20 people, will expand its sales staff.

Some of the new funding will be used to develop Newbay’s product range.

Its key product is FoneBlog, which allows mobile phone users with a personal internet website to post pictures, audio, video and text to share with others over computers and mobile phone browsers.

Mr Holohan said FoneBlog is being used by O2 Ireland, the country’s second-largest mobile operator, and the company is in discussions with several other potential customers including a “significant US player.”

“We are in operation just over a year and we have proven the viability of the product for us and other operators.

“We will be ramping up our sales force and marketing activities force and then we have some further products that we want to commercialise a bit faster than we anticipated, and that will be on the agenda in the first half of the year,” he added.

Mr Maloney said in a statement yesterday: “Mobile internet usage is growing rapidly as operators roll-out new devices, higher bandwidth and new data services.

“NewBay, with its strong management team and new funding, can now build on its success to date to become the global leader in providing community and social software systems for this market.”