A $3.8 million (£2.4 million) Series A funding round for cloud services provider Zynstra means that the early-stage business has now raised $6 million.
London-based Octopus Investments has led the new round alongside angels such as Richard Brennan, Tom Vari and Zynstra’s own chairman Jon Craton.
Having spent two years developing its cloud services product specifically aimed at small and medium-sized businesses (SMEs), Zynstra launched in July 2013.
The fresh injection of capital, which follows an angel round worth $2.4 million back in September 2012, will be used to speed up the company’s innovation efforts and expand its channel.
Nick East, co-founder and CEO of Zynstra, says that SMEs deserve an IT service which is easy to use, deploy and manage.
‘We’ve built a product that is designed specifically for them, not just a scaled-down version of a big enterprise solution,’ he adds.
‘We will use the additional funding to build on the existing patent-pending technology that sits at the heart of the Zynstra solution. We will also be aggressively expanding our channel programme to reach SMEs.’
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Zynstra was set up by an entrepreneurial team which founded Cramer Systems, a telecoms software company which was sold ten years later for $425 million.
Richard Brennan, the former EVP for global marketing at Orange Group, and Tom Vari, the former CIO of cable at Rogers Communications were part of Zynstra’s 2012 seed round and have followed up their interest.
Frederic Lardieg, member of the ventures team at new backer Octopus Investments, comments, ‘They are seasoned entrepreneurs and bring with them a wealth of experience, having successfully built and sold their previous company Cramer Systems.
‘At Zynstra they are developing a really exciting product that provides an innovative and cost efficient IT solution to small businesses, and has the potential to be a game-changing technology in the hybrid cloud market.’
