iCentera Secures Series A Funding From PrairieGold Venture Partners and Cargill Ventures
MINNEAPOLIS, MN. July 19, 2005—iCentera, the leading provider of on-demand communication portals that change the way businesses communicate, announced today that it has successfully completed a $1.5 million Series A financing with PrairieGold Venture Partners and Cargill Ventures. iCentera will use the funds to support continued product innovation and sales growth. Cargill's Paul Bieganski will join the iCentera Board of Directors along with Paul Batcheller from PrairieGold Venture Partners.
"iCentera's solution delivers easy to use and affordable portals that allow companies to cost-effectively communicate and collaborate with partners and customers," said Bieganski. "As a 'software as-a-service' solution, iCentera offers a breakthrough in creating and maintaining flexible, private and personalized communication portals without needing to involve internal IT resources."
"With an exceptional team at the helm, a strong and growing customer base, and a cost effective solution that solves a key problem facing most businesses, iCentera is well positioned to be a true market leader." said Batcheller.
A recent IDC and Portals Magazine survey showed that 67% of businesses are in the process of pursuing a portal initiative. Today, iCentera has more than 20,900 subscribers that have leveraged the icSuite to generate and manage over 2,000 portals to communicate with prospects, customers and partners. iCentera is a certified solutions provider for Salesforce.com, providing its icSuite as a fully integrated business collaboration tool. The icSuite's on-demand "Portals for Mortals™" deliver custom portal creation, absolute content management, and real-time analytics. More importantly, communication portals can be created, tailored, and delivered within minutes and without any IT department involvement.
"iCentera's on-demand solutions continue to attract interest from prospects, partners and industry analysts," said Craig Nelson, President and CEO of iCentera. "Our customers are quickly recognizing that empowering staff to better communicate both internally and externally with partners, prospects and customers is critical. Our goal is to enable companies to build deeper, collaborative relationships with partners, prospects and customers in order to drive revenue growth."
About iCentera Corporation
iCentera is the leading provider of on-demand communication portals that drive client communication and collaboration. Within 24 hours,
iCentera's hosted solution provides custom portal creation, absolute content management, and real-time content and portal analytics so
that companies can immediately improve communication with any audience, any time. Founded in 2003, iCentera delivers Portals for Mortals,
empowering customers to create portals on-demand to support critical business initiatives. Customers include: ADC, EMC, American Locker,
eCredit, IPIX, netForensics, and Visto. Partners include: The American Marketing Association (AMA) and salesforce.com. The icSuite is
salesforce.com sforce certified. For more information visit us at www.icentera.com.
About Cargill Ventures
Cargill Ventures (www.cargillventures.com) invests in early stage technology-driven companies that enhance business processes, growth and innovation in global industries relevant to Cargill. Cargill Ventures maintains offices in San Mateo, Calif., and Minneapolis. It is a business unit of Cargill, www.cargill.com, an international provider of food, agricultural and risk management products and services. With 105,000 employees in 59 countries, the company is committed to using its knowledge and experience to collaborate with customers to help them succeed. Additional information about Cargill Ventures is available at: www.cargillventures.com.
PrairieGold Venture Partners
PrairieGold Venture Partners is a Sioux Falls, SD-based venture capital firm focused on early and growth stage investment opportunities in the Upper Midwest (SD, ND, MN, IA, NE). For more information, see www.pgvp.com.