Otonomee seeks €2 million funding to aid US expansion
The customer service operations company has expanded internationally as its own clients have increased their overseas operations
Otonomee, an outsourcing start-up, is targeting substantial expansion in the US, having won its first clients in that market in recent months. The business plans to raise €2 million in the next year in order to aid that expansion.
The firm, which sets up and runs customer service operations for clients, was founded by Aidan and Hilary O’Shea in 2021. Its 95 staff work on a fully remote basis.
The business began essentially due to the Covid-19 pandemic, with its co-founders recognising an opportunity to run call centres remotely.
“I’ve worked in the industry for 20 years, previously with Voxpro, which had grown to 5,000 people before being sold. I left when it was acquired at the end of 2019. I was at home in early 2020, like everyone else, when Covid struck and I’d actually decided that I was going to leave the industry because I wanted to do something else,” Aidan O’Shea told the Business Post.
“It’s a people with technology business, where the people are really important. They’re hard to get and even harder to keep hold of. Sitting with Hilary, my wife, through Covid we saw that people could go home and work. I started thinking that I was 20 years in a business where people always had to come into call centres and felt that it could be done fully remote,” Aidan O’Shea said.
The rationale was that it was easier to hire due to a much wider talent pool, as Otonomee could hire internationally and outside of major urban centres.
“There was a big advantage as we could get better talent that stays longer because they have an easier life. They’ve no commute and they work where they want,” O’Shea said.
The business started off with an Irish client base but has expanded internationally as its own clients have increased their overseas operations.
“We started off with some small companies but we are working with some more mature ones now. We recently won a couple of US-based customers as well. They are like us, they are remote. We’ve won business where we’ve never physically met the client,” O’Shea said.
Otonomee is backed by Enterprise Ireland and O’Shea said the ability to meet with other growth businesses in Ireland has proven to be a big help to the company.
“We’re doing a programme called Leadership 4 Growth; it helps companies to grow and scale. We’re working and learning together. We’ve been able to focus on different elements of the business, like HR and sales, but ultimately it’s about developing a strategy for growth,” he said.
“Now that we have customers in the US, we can be more specific with Enterprise Ireland about how we want them to help us with our growth plans. We’ve built the foundation; now we want to scale rapidly.”
This Making it Work article is produced in partnership with Enterprise Ireland.
