March 18 (SeeNews) - Bulgaria-based developer of SMS marketing solutions SMSBump said on Thursday that it plans to increase the number of its employees to 80 in 2021 after its Israel-based owner Yotpo raised $230 million (234.8 million euro) in a new funding round that puts Yotpo at a $1.4 billion unicorn valuation.
Yotpo intends to use the financing raised in Series F funding round, its largest ever, to develop its product range and accelerate its e-commerce marketing platform which will lead to a demand for more talent in the company's teams in Bulgaria, the U.S., Israel, and the U.K., SMSBump said in an e-mailed statement adding that Yotpo plans to enter new markets including Australia.
The new funding round was led by US-based venture capital firm Bessemer Venture Partners (BVP), SMSBump said.
SMSBump is the fastest developing product of Yotpo's portfolio, posting year-on-year growth in revenue of over 170% in 2020. This significant increase is attributed to the synergy between Yotpo's clients and SMSBump's clients after the Israeli company acquired the Sofia-based startup last year as well as to the boom in the e-commerce sector on a global scale driven by the coronavirus pandemic, Viktoria Georgieva-Philbrick, content writer at SMSBump told SeeNews on Thursday.
SMSBump's founders Mihail Stoychev and Georgi Petrov said in the statement that they aim to turn the company's Sofia office into a pan-European research and development centre for Yotpo. Currently, SMSBump's platform is used by over 90,000 online brands all over the world, according to the statement.
The latest funding round opens new growth opportunities for SMSBump and its office in Sofia will be of key importance for the implementation of growth strategies. Along with the increase in headcount, SMSBump envisages the development of a lot of new functionalities, Petrov noted.
Last year, SMSBump said that it plans to double the number of its employees to 60 in 2021. The planned headcount expansion will be financed with part of the funds raised by Yotpo, in a funding round that was closed in August, the startup said at the time.
Sofia-headquartered SMSBump, established in 2018, provides a global reach for SMS messages, as well as entire SMS marketing strategies for companies such as Canada-based Shopify and US-based BigCommerce, according to data published on SMSBump's LinkedIn profile. Yotpo acquired SMSBump in January 2020 for an undisclosed price.
(1 euro = 1.95583 levs)