Mobility solutions firm Movius, the company behind Sprint’s MultiLine product, has raised $45 million in a series D funding round. The round was led by new investor JPMorgan Chase, which Movius has been working with to scale its product offerings.
Movius offers an all-in-one mobility platform to enable businesses to mobilize their workforce and implement a secure and compliant BYOD strategy for employees. Its patented MultiLine offering, which is sold in the U.S. through channel partner Sprint, is a cloud-based app that assigns a business number to an employee’s personal device. The platform works across devices, including smartphones, tablets and desktops. It works across Wi-Fi networks, mobile data and cellular channels, and is carrier-agnostic.
“We’re really about dramatically simplifying how a business interacts with its customers via any form of communication, voice, text or message, on any kind of digital device,” said John Loiacono, newly appointed CEO of Movius, in an interview with FierceWireless. “I would say 99.8% of the customers we are speaking with today are moving toward a BYOD model. What we’re hearing though are the challenges that come with the BYOD model—things like I have to work globally, my solution needs to be carrier grade, it has to be secure, I have to meet all my client needs.”
While plenty of solutions are available to businesses today to add second phone lines to personal devices, Loiacono said Movius’ global platform checks all those boxes, which is what makes its offering so unique in the marketplace.
The platform is able to track and record all communication that occurs through the business number, including voice conversations and texting. “It allows you to have not just a second phone number, but a business personality to that phone," Loiacono said. All of the business' services are associated with that business phone line as well as all the applications on the backend. And they're all traceable and trackable.
The platform can be configured to be compliant with industry regulations and security rules across sectors, including HIPAA for medical services and FINRA for financial services. It is also able to integrate business communications with existing enterprise mobility management and CRM systems.
The company, which began in 2008 offering solutions for pagers, voicemail and other legacy communication services, pivoted toward SaaS business communications in 2014, as the BYOD model began to gain traction. Movius currently has around 1,500 customers, most of which are small and medium-sized businesses acquired through Sprint and other carrier partners, including Telefonica, Telstra, Altice, MTN, Movistar and Telus.
With $45 million in new funding, Loiacono said the company is gearing up to tackle enterprise-class customers. “Now we’re seeing large banking institutions, large healthcare organizations, all pushing toward this BYOD model, and all needing an enterprise-class solution,” he said, adding that the company has been working with JPMorgan Chase to scale the platform, going from 5 to 25 users per customer to 25,000 users per customer.
“In the very near term, you’re going to hear more from us about enterprise customers now that we have validated this with the SMB customers.”