Hampshire-based B2B service provider Onecom has raised £100 million from Lloyds Development Capital (LDC) and Ares Capital. This brings its total haul to £130 million, as it had previously raised £30 million from HSBC (April 2019).
The company, which sells fixed line, mobile, IoT, broadband and cloud services to businesses, was founded in 2013 as a result of the merger of Premier Telecom and Business Phones Direct. Since then it has acquired Evolve (2016) and True Telecom (2018), and doubled its revenues to £83 million in FY2017-18 (up from £69 million the year before).
The company now employs 400 people and will use part of the money raised to aggressively expand its workforce. It claims to have around 100,000 business customers, including the likes of Farrow & Ball, Thwaites, Celtic Manor and 118 UK, and partners with both Gamma and Vodafone.
In June 2019 it announced that it has renewed its partnership with Vodafone in a deal that it says could be worth up to £600 million, or £100 million per year. As part of this deal, it has committed to tripling its growth in fixed line services, becoming a market leader in unified comms, and offering 5G services to SMEs.
In addition to increasing its workforce it will install new systems and processes in preparation for growth, as well as identify targets for acquisition.
Onecom also announced that it had appointed ex-Easynet CEO Mark Thompson as its new chairman.