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Large corporations and government agencies are increasingly
looking for faster ways to get the word out about emergencies,
so they can minimize the danger to their employees when an
active shooter, terrorism or a natural disaster strike.
Veritas Capital, which bought ECN in 2015, has merged the two
firms to create a new company, OnSolve, that will aim to take on
publicly traded market leader Everbridge Inc <EVBG.O>.
Everbridge went public last fall and has forecast $100 million
in annual revenue this year.
OnSolve chief executive Wain Kellum said in an interview that
his company is targeting $250 million in annual revenue in the
next four to five years.
Kellum said that the company's software, which provides real
time emergency notifications designed to allow people to confirm
they received the messages and respond, "can mean the difference
between life and death", and reduces costs and damages to its
customers.
The Emergency Mass Notification Services (EMNS) market was $2.2
billion at the end of 2015 and is expected to expand to $4.9
billion by 2020, according to research firm Frost & Sullivan.
Terms of the transaction were undisclosed. A source familiar
with the matter who could not be named because the details of
the deal were private, said that New Jersey-based Send Word Now
was valued in the "low hundreds of millions" and the deal about
doubles the size of ECN.
Send Word Now was started in 2001 after its founders felt there
was a need for better crisis communications following the
terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
Veritas acquired ECN in June 2015 for an undisclosed sum from
private equity firm, the Riverside Company.
(Reporting by Liana B. Baker in San Francisco; Editing by
Muralikumar Anantharaman)
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