NEWCASTLE-founded workforce software manager Pegasus has raised $28 million from Silicon Valley tech investment firm Accel-KKR to spread its wings globally.
Pegasus chief executive officer Adam Boyle said the "significant" cash injection would allow the company, which develops software to manage the safety and competency of more than 3 million workers for companies including Woolworths, Lendlease and BHP, to cement operations in the UK, Europe and North America.
"We have had 25 per cent year-on-year growth since 2013, we have a healthy profit, we wanted further investment to grow outside Australia," Maitland-raised Mr Boyle said.
"We still have plenty to do in Australia, but we thought it our best pathway to accelerating growth in the US and US and we want to do it via acquisitions and partnerships ... to effectively grow with our world-class clients."
Mr Boyle said the investment from Accel-KKR would give the US company a minority shareholding, with its principal Joe Porten joining the Pegasus board.
Pegasus began in 1987 in Singleton as a mining labour hire firm. When Mr Boyle, who studied computer science at the University of Newcastle, joined in 2007, shareholders saw the need to diversify labour hire was highly competitive.
"They decided to invest more in the software space and we built on the idea of a worker competency program, and we thought if we could connect most of the mine sites in the Hunter and make it easier for contract workers to get to work [by having requisite accreditation and training] and work safely, that would be the initial focus," Mr Boyle recalls.
Pegasus offers software solutions for workers and firms in high-risk sectors including mining and construction. Its initial product was designed to keep mine workers safe in real time.
"We've reinvented workplace labour and safety management for the modern company and mobile worker," Mr Boyle said, adding Pegasus was proving that "we can develop Newcastle talent to be globally competitive" while providing a unique and enviable career/life balance.
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