YFM VENTURE FINANCE AND RBS PROVIDE FUNDING SOLUTION TO YORK-BASED GO-SIM
November 07
The Yorkshire and Humber Equity Fund (YHEF), the Regional Venture Capital Fund for the Yorkshire and Humber region, has invested £250,000 in York-based GO-SIM " a leading provider of prepaid global SIM cards for mobile phones " after being introduced through Connect Yorkshire. To aid further growth, The Royal Bank of Scotland has also provided a working capital facility.
Chris Fitzsimmons, YHEF investment manager, saw the potential of the product and highly experienced management team. He commented: "With GO-SIM we saw a unique opportunity within the market which we believe will grow substantially in the coming years."
Jeremy Rebbeck, Relationship Manager, Commercial Banking at RBS, who put the funding line in place, added: "GO-SIM is an excellent idea and the company has achieved a great deal of success since it started. Through our support the company should find itself in a good position to take advantage of the interest currently being shown in its services. RBS is delighted to support the business and we look forward to seeing GO-SIM grow even further globally."
Following on from the company’s growing success, the management team now has the funding to further develop the product and the GOSIM.com website, increase staff numbers, and roll-out additional marketing campaigns.
GO-SIM Managing Director, David Agar, commenting on the new injection of funding, said: "We have been impressed with both RBS and the YFM Venture Finance’s approach in recognising GO-SIM as a great opportunity, and supporting us in our first round of funding. This new line of funding comes at a good time for the business. We are attracting a lot of interest from new customers and strategic partners in our products, and to meet these large numbers of requests for our services we required additional support."
GO-SIM has a client base which includes the Foreign Commonwealth Office, British Red Cross, Visa International and the leading US-based retailer, Best Buy. The global SIM supplier plans to role out partnerships with key strategic partners in the travel industry across the world.
Customers face expensive charges when using mobile phones outside the UK due to costly roaming charges. The GO-SIM Global SIM works in more than 140 countries and unlike standard UK network providers, incoming calls and texts are free in many countries, enabling travellers to save up to 85% on the bill that would normally await them.
To use GO-SIM, customers simply swap their existing SIM card with the GO-SIM Global SIM card each time they travel abroad.
YHEF is a £25 million Regional Venture Capital Fund which will invest in fast growing SMEs across the Yorkshire and Humber region, managed by YFM Venture Finance and part of the YFM Group. Investments can be up to £500,000 although any initial tranche of money would be to a maximum of £250,000. In the 12 months to September 2007, YHEF invested in nine companies in deals worth a total of over £4 million.
GO-SIM was originally a subsidiary company of the Hirefone Group. With more than 15 years’ experience in the mobile telecommunications marketplace, Hirefone has group sales of approximately £2 million and was founded to provide short-term mobile phone rental solutions for business customers on the move overseas.
Lawyers for YFM Group were Keeble Hawson and Hempson for GO-SIM.