Managing a company’s tech infrastructure can be tough, especially for startups, small-, and medium-sized businesses. Often these companies might want to have the same top-notch quality service that larger, more established ones have, but can’t afford. One company has set out to see if it can solve that problem: 24/7 Techies is a service that says it’s looking to democratize tech support for companies who want Fortune 500-class service for a price SMBs can afford.
Started by Dilendra Wimalasekere, this Sri Lankan-based company is announcing today that it has secured $600,000 in seed funding from 500 Startups and other angel investors like Rajan Anandan, the Vice President of Google India, and Shailesh Rao, the Twitter’s Vice President of International Operations. Having launched earlier this year, 24/7 Techies is now providing support to over 100 clients by basically acting like their in-house IT person, but remotely.
The company has 50-60 people based in Sri Lanka who will respond and assist its customers any time of the day through its online service model. It says that many of its technicians have certifications that many customers have, like being Microsoft Gold Partners, Cisco certified, and much more. Users of the service have three ways to contact 24/7 Techies when there is a problem: through a toll-free number, email support, or through a program installed on all computers after sign on, which enables the support representative to get remote access to solve the problem.
Wimalasekere says that 70-80% of its customers are right here in the United States, while the rest are in Canada, Europe, and Australia.
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Right now, businesses primarily find 24/7 Techies through online marketing and the company is looking at $1 million in revenue this year, with the figure expected to double next year. Based on the company’s analysis, it claims that being a fully-bundled service is going to be 40-50% less than what a company would find with locally-managed services. Currently customers are charged $99 per month for its full-service offering if they have between 1-3 employees. For those with more employees, the cost will be $399 per month.
24/7 Techies is not a software development company so the company won’t touch any issues with WordPress or anything like that — it likes to compare itself to Best Buy’s Geek Squad or other related services — so anything you would probably talk to them about, 24/7 Techies would do the same thing, except be more accessible at any point in time while supporting over 100 cloud applications and deliver CIO services to businesses.
Based on all of this, you might think of 24/7 Techies as nothing more than outsourcing IT support to another country, very similar to what you might get with a call center when looking for assistance. Wimalasekere says that it’s not because the IT service is for businesses and is focusing on providing support within 60 seconds of receiving a call, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week while also functioning as an extension of your business as a CIO on all your tech-related problems. This isn’t a consumer-facing problem — rather it’s a challenge that businesses are facing.
With this round of funding, Wimalasekere says that it will look to launching additional services to help its customers while also focusing on growing its online marketing efforts.
Photo credit: PIERRE VERDY/AFP/Getty Images
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