VCT News
Beringea and YFM Equity Partners Invest in CInergy International Limited
mobilife.com, the first independent mobile comparison service offering tailored deals to UK customers, raises expansion capital funding
14th February 2011 - London - Beringea, manager of the ProVen VCTs and YFM Equity Partners, which manages The Capital Fund, have announced their investment into CInergy International Limited - the provider of mobile phone comparison service www.mobilife.com. This is a first investment by Beringea, who led the deal, and a follow-on investment for YFM Equity Partners.
Mobilife helps consumers reduce their mobile phone bill while finding the perfect handset to suit their needs and lifestyle. By analysing your monthly bills Mobilife measures your exact usage and helps cut out any unused texts and wasted minutes to save you money. Mobilife scans over 1,000,000 available deals saving customers hundreds of pounds per year on average on their mobile phone contract - and the service is provided for free.
CInergy has extensive experience in mobile phone analytics. The company was founded in 2003 by Managing Director, Brian Boroff, and Chairman, Richard Merrigan, to deliver customer acquisition and retention solutions to mobile service providers. The company has long standing relationships with Orange and Vodafone.
Karen McCormick, investment director and Partner at Beringea, led the deal and will be joining CInergy's board as a non executive director. Karen commented "This is a growing market with strong demand – more people in the UK carry mobiles than wallets and customers frequently change contracts and phones. CInergy's Mobilife site provides one of the only truly independent engines in the market and makes the user experience very easy. CInergy has a great management team who really understand this space."
Helen Reynolds of YFM Equity Partners commented, "We are delighted to make a further investment in Cinergy and are excited about the potential for Mobilife in the face of growing consumer demand for the best possible deals in this complex space. The management team at Cinergy has a high level of expertise in the mobile telecom space and strong relationships with UK operators."
Brian Boroff Managing Director of CInergy commented, "We are so pleased to be working with Beringea and continuing our established and successful relationship with YFM Equity Partners. CInergy has built a fantastic team of people for Mobilife. We are very excited about the unique technology used in our bill analyser and are already seeing demand for the service, despite it only being in its beta phase, Mobilife users can upload their mobile phone bills and our system provides a real-time personalised recommendation of the best mobile phone deal available to suit their exact needs - all safe, secure and powered by the same engine relied upon by thousands of customer-facing staff in UK mobile operators."
Mobilife serves the growing demand for people to research and buy their mobiles online - a market which, according to Mobile News, rose by over 10 per cent in Europe last year.
About Beringea
Beringea is an international venture capital firm with offices in London and Detroit. In the UK Beringea manages ProVen VCT, ProVen Health VCT, ProVen Growth & Income VCT and Global Rights Fund II. Beringea launched its first VCT in 1996, making it one of the most experienced VCT managers in the UK. ProVen Growth & Income and ProVen VCT are highest performing VCTs of their launch years, respectively, according to www.taxefficientreview.com. For more information please visit www.provenvcts.co.uk.