Helping businesses capitalise on growth in mobile communication.

Textlocal was founded in 2005 by Alastair Shortland and Darren Daws who built the company, without any external capital, into an award-winning mobile communications company based in Chester and Malvern in the UK. The company provides a self-service cloud communications platform that brings customer engagement tools to businesses across Europe. Publicly listed IMImobile, a leading global technology company, has agreed to acquire 100% of Textlocal for £13.15m.

“Throughout the transaction, GP Bullhound provided invaluable advice and support to Alastair and myself. It is clearly very experienced at working with founders and really understood our business and future plans. Its network connected us to the leading global mobile businesses and as a result, we were able to select IMImobile as the best match for us and our team,” said Darren Daws, co-founder and Chairman of Textlocal.

IMImobile Chief Executive Officer Jay Patel commented: “The acquisition of Textlocal will help us build out our set of smarter mobile engagement products and solutions. Textlocal has a best-in-class product that addresses segments of the market that we do not currently serve.”

This represents the completion of GP Bullhound’s 22nd transaction in 2014 and further highlights the firm’s commitment to working with category leaders.

Enquiries
For enquiries please contact:
Hugh Campbell, Managing Partner, hugh.campbell@gpbullhound.com
Adam Rudd, Vice President, adam.rudd@gpbullhound.com

GP Bullhound
GP Bullhound is an international technology investment banking group with offices in London, San Francisco, Stockholm, Berlin and Manchester. Founded in 1999, GP Bullhound provides world-class advice on mergers, acquisitions and private placements to a diverse range of corporate clients, institutional investors and high net worth individuals. Combining a true love for entrepreneurship and innovation with deep global buyer relations and sector expertise, GP Bullhound has completed transactions for many category leaders, most recently selling Cambridge Technology Partners to Atos, Pozitron to Monitise, Pure360 to SEP, Tunigo to Spotify, and Fjord to Accenture. For more information, please visit www.gpbullhound.com.

Textlocal
Textlocal is a self-service SMS communications company dedicated to bringing market-leading customer engagement tools to businesses across Europe. Its provides a variety of tools including marketing and notification customer messaging, surveying, m-ticketing / vouchering and an easy to use mobile web page editor via its self-service cloud platform. The company was founded in 2005 by Alastair Shortland and Darren Daws and today supports over 120,000 customers across the UK, Ireland and Spain. The technology behind Textlocal is proprietary and has won a variety of high profile awards including EMMA’s best SMS platform award.

IMImobile
IMImobile is a leading global technology company providing software and services that help businesses capitalise on the growth in mobile communication. Its services, delivered in over 60 countries in Europe, the Americas, MEA and India, help its clients to engage and transact with their customers more efficiently through smarter mobile engagement. The company’s solution allow customers to use mobile as a channel to create new revenue streams, as CRM and customer engagement channel and as a channel to improve business operations. IMImobile’s DaVinci suite of products are modular, scalable and delivered through cloud infrastructure which is integrated into mobile operator networks, internet services and social media platforms. The products and solutions have helped IMImobile establish a blue-chip client base of leading mobile operators and global enterprises. Key customers include Vodafone, O2, Telefonica, Aircel, Airtel, BSNL, AT&T, MTN, France Telecom, Centrica, Coca-Cola, Universal Music, Tata, the AA, the BBC and major financial institutions. The company is headquartered in London with offices in Hyderabad, Atlanta and Dubai and has 650 employees worldwide. IMImobile is quoted on the London Stock Exchange’s AIM market with the TIDM code IMO.