Queensland-founded tech company RedEye recently raised $10.4 million in Series B funding from a cohort of private and public investors, led by Energy Innovation Capital (USA) with a second round from the Business Development Fund (Australia). The funding will be used to scale the business globally, driven by strong demand in Australia, the United States, and New Zealand.
Established in 2012, RedEye offers cloud and mobile based digital engineering solutions for companies that own and operate critical infrastructure. The company offers the only purpose built digital solution for managing “As-Built” data (engineering drawings, 3D models and associated documents) for large asset owners – RedEyeDMS. In 2016, RedEye launched RedEyeWFM, a unique collaborative, work management platform for large infrastructure operators and their service providers.
The funding will continue the company’s strong trajectory of growth, bolstering its existing operations in Australia and the USA, and generating about 70 new jobs in the coming 24 months.
RedEye currently employs 70 people between its Brisbane, Nevada and Manilla offices. In January 2017, it established its US headquarters in Las Vegas, Nevada and began work with Southern Nevada Water Authority / Las Vegas Valley Water District.
Why has RedEye attracted this funding?
Energy Innovation Capital (EIC), with offices in Houston and Silicon Valley led RedEye’s Series B. George Coyle, Managing Partner of EIC and well-regarded venture capital investor in the Energy technology industry, said that RedEye is addressing an unmet need in the market.
“RedEye have developed Software as a Service (SaaS) solutions for the full asset management lifecycle rather than just the design and construction phase,” George said. “I’m excited to partner with RedEye to help scale in the United States and beyond.
RedEye Co-Founder and CEO, Wayne Gerard, said that having achieved product market fit a couple of years ago, we’ve been growing 100% year on year, we felt it was the right time to raise a substantial round.
“We consciously decided not to rush this round,” said Wayne. “Instead we took the time to find the right international investor that had the skills and network to help us achieve our ambitious growth goals, particularly in the US. We’re excited about EIC’s deep domain expertise in enterprise SaaS as well as their experience within our target industries. We had a number of interested investors and turned down two previous opportunities because we were committed to finding an investor that was really aligned with our values, culture and shared our growth vision.”
A total of 7 investors have taken part in this round including the Queensland Government’s Business Development Fund (BDF), which contributing funding for a second time.
The Queensland Government is leading Australia with their $600m Advance Queensland program, which is building Queensland’s startup ecosystem and aims to diversify the Queensland economy. The BDF is an $80m Venture Capital Fund that aims to help Queensland startups attract capital and create high value jobs in Queensland.
Queensland’s Deputy Premier and Treasurer Jackie Trad said that supporting emerging companies through the $80 million Business Development Fund (BDF) underpins the Government’s commitment to growing jobs and strengthen the State’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
“The BDF has a unique and highly successful funding model which stands out from the crowd,” said Ms Trad. “The Fund has been successful in growing the pool of angel and venture capital funding to support the growth of innovative businesses, which in turn creates high-value jobs and showcases Queensland in Australia and around the world.
“The BDF is a key plank of our $650 million Advance Queensland strategy which supports programs that drive innovation, build on Queensland’s natural advantages, and help to raise our profile as an attractive investment destination,” she said.
Eden Lawrence from QIC who runs the BDF on behalf of the Queensland Government said: “RedEye is a true Queensland success story, their solutions are used by many of world’s leading utilities, mining companies and infrastructure assets. They have created over 60 jobs in Queensland and there is lots of opportunity for further growth. We’re excited to have helped RedEye attract EIC to invest in Queensland.”
RedEye’s first client was BHP, now RedEye solutions are used by a broad range of large asset owners in industries like water, power, mining, oil & gas, infrastructure, healthcare and government. RedEye clients manage more than $150bn worth of assets and typically achieve a return on investment within 12 months, as well as significant, ongoing savings.
Australian clients include SA Power Networks, Snowy Hydro, BHP and Alinta Energy. Internationally, RedEye implemented data management for low-cost gold producer, Alacer Gold Corp [TSX: ASR and ASX: AQG]. Their expansion project in Turkey, commencing 2015 is now transitioning into operations and asset management phase.
RedEye has been on EIC’s radar in recent years, particularly for its drive to transform businesses by transferring data from network folders and obsolete software to the cloud and mobile devices.
RedEye co-founder and chief executive Wayne Gerard, a startup and entrepreneurship advocate, said we’ve learnt a lot of valuable lessons raising our Series B which we’ll share on our blog shortly, now it’s time to focus on delivering some exciting new functionality for our clients and growing RedEye.
