Indigo aims for 20,000 subscribers

INDIGO, the Internet provider, aims to increase its customer base from 13,000 to more than 20,000 within the next year following the completion of a share issue which has raised £1.6 million.

The new investors, who have provided the additional capital, include Standard Life which now has 20 per cent of Indigo and clients of Davy stockbrokers who have 9 per cent.

Family interests of Mr Shay Moran - who acquired Indigo from the Moyna family three months ago - have 46 per cent of the company while Indigo directors Mr Frank Anderson and Mr Pat Lyons have 16 per cent and 5 per cent respectively. Mr Richard Nash, of Nash's Mineral Water, holds the remaining 4 per cent.

Mr Moran said: "The new investment will strengthen the capital base, allowing us to invest even further in developing our business and services in the period ahead."

He said Indigo currently had 13,000 Irish customers but was growing its customer base by 800 to 1,000 a month.

"We have the technology in place to cope with that volume of business," he added.

About a third of Indigo's customers are from the corporate sector and the group aims to boost its corporate business further through the appointment of sales executives in Galway and Cork in the next few weeks.

This will bring the number of staff on Indigo's corporate sales team to eight.

"Our aim is to have a situation where more and more business is conducted through the Internet with data based websites where companies can display price lists, catalogues and product offerings, he said.

Indigo will shortly introduce a new home page design services bureau and a new range of services specifically for the corporate sector. Mr Moran said, however, that any substantial increase in business was unlikely to result in any significant increase in the current employment of 50.

"We have critical mass with that number of people if we had 50,000 subscribers it would probably mean that we would need another two people," he said.

Mr Moran said the funds raised would see Indigo through to a posit ion where it was self financing and generating sufficient profits and cash flow to fund further expansion.

He did not, however, rule out raising further funds if an appropriate acquisition presented itself nor did he rule out taking a market listing - on Nasdaq or in the Irish market - at a later date.