Munich-based startup Yoummday has today announced the acquisition of ICON Communications Centres, a central-European company providing outsourced customer operations. The acquisition reflects Yoummday’s position as an emerging market leader in Europe for its work-at-home OS for customer experience staff.
Fresh on the heels of a €30 million raise in February this year, Yoummday has just made its first M&A deal, acquiring Prague-based ICON Communications. It’s part of the startup’s strategy to increase its range and multilingual capability, and, enables it to connect more customer talent to the digital platform. Yoummday has acquired the central European company from ESPIRA Investments s.r.o. (ESPIRA) and ICON’s executive management team as it continues to shake up the traditional BPO and contact centre models.
Yoummday: New work models for customer services
Founded in 2016, the Munich-based startup takes a new approach to how customer service workers operate, empowering a new generation of work-at-home in the profession. It was founded in Munich by telegate and GoYellow founder Dr. Klaus Harisch and his sons Pablo and Lion.
Yoummday’s work-at-home operating system (w@h OS) gives independent entrepreneurs the ability to choose when and where they work across a variety of customer experience functions for the brand they like. As a result, companies of all sizes in any sector can take advantage of an engaged and scalable workforce, contributing a wide range of skills and languages to the Yoummday talent pool which acts as a marketplace.
On the Yoummday platform, over 6,000 customer service talents from 65 nations working remotely from home are matched with client companies in need of professional customer service. Customers are enjoying the flexibility and range of talent this brings when building their workforce. They can also decide upon either a self-managed or Yoummday-managed deployment of services. The platform additionally takes care of quality assurance, the onboarding of new independent entrepreneurs and additional training.
This acquisition adds significant expertise in multilingual capacity and global reach – a key component of Yoummday’s business proposition.
ICON Communications Centres: Multilingual business process outsourcer
Since 2003, ICON has been providing international companies with outsourced customer operations. It is, therefore, an early player in the market that Yoummday is shaking up and taking by storm. Given its decades of experience, ICON is able to bring significant benefits and expertise to the young startup, particularly with respect to native-level multilingual capability, global reach, and B2B customer experiences.
ICON was co-founded by CEO Helen Hickin after identifying Prague as an ideal nearshore location due to its geography, advantageous price point, and the depth of multilingual talent available. It is capable of providing complex customer interactions in 30 languages and counts several of the world’s most well-known travel, telecommunication, and education technology companies within its client portfolio.
Helen Hickin, CEO said: “We identified a gap in the market and opened the first outsourced BPO in Prague. Twenty years later, the BPO sector has changed significantly; through innovative technology, yoummday has found an exciting new way for companies to outsource operations with greater flexibility. It’s the right time for ICON’s next evolution and yoummday is perfectly positioned to ensure ICON’s clients continue to benefit from innovative delivery solutions”
The Acquisition
The financial details of this new deal remain undisclosed, but it is a significant movement in the market. It’s not often that startups pick up key market players so early on in their scaling process. Further, following Yoummday’s proven success within the EU, its move into both the US and UK markets is now expedited thanks to ICON’s existing operations.
Dr. Klaus Harisch, CEO and Founder of Yoummday, commented: “The acquisition of ICON furnishes the opportunity to strengthen our growth strategy, which is predicated on integrating traditional BPO operators into our own proprietary marketplace platform. We look forward to working with the ICON team and weaving their unique capabilities into the yoummday brand”
ICON’s C-Team will continue to operate alongside Yoummday, and the ICON brand remains in operation for the foreseeable future. The transaction sees Yoummday purchase 100% of ICON from CEE Communications s.r.o., of which CEE-based private equity firm ESPIRA, is the majority shareholder.
Emilia Mamajova, ESPIRA’s Co-Founding Partner, stated: “Our goal together with the management team was to develop ICON on the international arena as a successful independent provider of high value-added services – and over the past three years Helen and her team have succeeded in reaching this objective. We congratulate them and wish the team continued success in their partnership with yoummday.”
