Cape Town-based Grapevine Interactive, an m-commerce application service provider, has secured funding from two leading venture capital (VC) players - Dimension Data^1s Protocol and Brait^1s Technology and Innovation Fund I.
The formal agreement was signed between the three parties in October and signifies the next level in the development of the Grapevine Interactive business.
The two new VC partners have acquired a total of 40% of the Grapevine business for an undisclosed sum.
"We have been developing our product offering and conducting business since March and needed a capital injection to take us to the next development stage," says Nick Orton, MD of Grapevine.
Grapevine^1s business focuses on providing the corporate market with an immediate solution for delivering information services across all mobile channels, on any scale, at any time and on an interactive basis.
The Grapevine Interactive programming team have developed and tested all the application software. A core team of industry specialists have been operational since March.
"Most consumer-oriented organisations will require a mobile portal to segments of their customer-base over the next 18 months," says Richard Came, group marketing director of Dimension Data.
"This medium will become increasingly permission-based and interactive, and many organisations will have to outsource parts or all of their wireless front-end to companies like Grapevine, for reasons of complexity, economies of scale and scope, and especially, time-to-market pressures."
Impact
Orton says the adoption of customer relationship management (CRM) tools that leverage Web, wireless and voice channels to build one-to-one, personal relationships with millions of consumers is already having a huge impact on the business world.
Analysts predict that the so-called eCRM solutions will create a market valued at $5 billion by the end of this year.
"Our aim is to provide the foundation for customer-centric organisations to build one-to-one relationships with their customers and meet their needs proactively through interactive, permission-based mobile communications."
Typically, personalised alerts, notifications, announcements and offers form the core offering. The mediums include short message service, synthesised voice, interactive voice response, Wireless Application Protocol, e-mail and fax.
Services could include fraud alerts on bank account, unit trust portfolio value notifications, chronic medicine alerts, flight delayed/cancelled notifications, personalised special product offer notifications and the like.
Orton highlights the fact that Grapevine can offer interactive capability with all the communication services mentioned and stresses the permission-based (or opt-in) nature of the service.
"We will totally avoid the unsolicited commercial messages issue, by maintaining best practice in consumer privacy."
Orton says Grapevine`s target is to drive customer-value for organisations in financial services, telco, retail, healthcare, entertainment and leisure, and travel sectors
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