Datria Recognizes $7.5M Series C Round

Datria Systems Inc. announced last week that it closed a $7.5 million Series C financing. Technology Partners and SAP Ventures led the round and was joined by all the previous investors – Four States Investments, Greenwood Gulch Ventures, Koch Ventures and Quest Capital.

With angel backing from Four States, Datria spun out of Lockheed Martin in 1997, originally as a voice and data application for the defense industry. Since then, the company has developed core applications targeted at mobile blue-collar workers such as telecommunications linemen, utility technicians and municipal field employees.

Mobile workers use Datria’s software, sold under the VoCarta brand, to interact verbally with central databases using telephones – eliminating the need for central data entry personnel or laptops for the mobile workers.

Datria CEO Jim Greenwell says the company currently has 60 customers. When a technician on an assignment from Bell Canada – Greenwell’s example of a bread-and-butter client – calls in, the system asks for an employee ID number. According to the example, the employee can respond in French or English, and the system will proceed in that language. It will also match the response to a stored voice sample to biometrically identify the employee.

From there the system will work with the employee to perform typical functions, such as completing a work order, ordering parts or logging labor hours. Datria software acts as a front-end to legacy systems, such as Remedy CRM, Lucent WFM, Telcordia products and SAP applications.

Greenwell says it was this interaction with SAP’s software that eventually led Datria to learn about and to gain SAP Ventures as an investor in the latest round, which Greenwell says came at a flat valuation from the company’s Series B round in 2000. He adds that in this environment that’s something, “which we view as positive.”

Including the angel round, the 2000 Series B and a round of convertible debt in between, the company raised $6.5 million. Greenwell says the Englewood, Colo.-based company broke even in the third quarter, but he predicts the expansion expected to follow this round will keep it from breaking even again until the first quarter of 2001.

Greenwell says Datria has doubled its revenue year-over-year for the last two years, topping $5 million this year. He says the latest round will go to expanding the company’s sales force and making the product platform- and technology-independent. He expects the sales force to grow to 10 employees from four and the overall company to grow to 50 from 25 employees.

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