NearForm, the Waterford company behind the Covid-19 contact tracing app, has secured investment to scale-up in Europe and the US.
NearForm has revealed plans to grow five-fold after securing a strategic investment from Columbia Capital to support market penetration and scale its operations across North America and Europe.
The Waterford company will use the additional capital to scale operations and accelerate recruitment in sales, marketing, engineering and design, across North America and Europe, including Ireland.
“The unprecedented events of 2020 have shown that both public and private sector companies must react quickly to meet the challenges of today’s world”
NearForm develops enterprise software to help large corporate and public sector companies scale their platforms for the digital economy. Using open-source software, their digital products deliver secure mobile and web platforms that can scale to meet industry and consumer demands.
Tip of the spear for digital transformation
Digital transformation remains the number one priority for CIOs in 2021, as companies look to innovate and grow post-pandemic. Yet more than 80% of digital transformations fail. When speed and agility are crucial, traditional consulting firm methods are expensive and slow.
NearForm’s open source approach has accelerated cost-effective digital transformations for clients including Walmart, IBM, and Condé Nast, and recently they developed the most widely adopted COVID contract tracing app code, Covid Green, now used from New York to New Zealand.
“The unprecedented events of 2020 have shown that both public and private sector companies must react quickly to meet the challenges of today’s world,” said Cian Ó Maidín, Founder and CEO of NearForm.
“NearForm was founded on the belief that open source technology has become best practice for delivering cost-effective, scalable and secure digital platforms at speed for the most challenging projects.
“Our open source software solutions are already used by many of the world’s biggest companies, like Facebook, Netflix, and Uber, and can help others meet consumers’ digital expectations faster than traditional methods.” said Ó Maidín.
NearForm will use the investment to scale operations and accelerate recruitment in sales, marketing, engineering and design, across North America and Europe to meet growing market demand from companies seeking digital solutions to keep pace with competitors and meet the changing digital demands of their consumers.
“As digital becomes the default form of interface for both commercial and civic organizations, creating software stacks that emphasise agility can unlock attractive options for even those with the most complex enterprise architectures,” said Jason Booma, partner at Columbia Capital.
“NearForm has an expert engineering-led culture that reliably translates to achieving positive and cost-effective customer outcomes. We look forward to working with the company as it scales and expands globally,” Booma added.
Main image: Cian Ó Maidín, Founder and CEO of NearForm
By John Kennedy (john.kennedy3@boi.com)
Published: 16 February 2021
