“The current development of the company exceeded our expectations. We have never thought that we would reach a 1,313 people team, that we would have a presence in 19 countries,” Irina Socol says, who started the business together with her husband, Alexandru Radasanu, twenty years ago. Both of them were working as software engineers back then.
The decision the launch its own products in mid nineties and the two rounds of investments in the company in 2000 and 2005 played a key role in its development.
“We’ve always had this principle that if you want to grow, to develop you have to have partners, have international partners, have capital inflows. I think it’s a mistake not to let go of at least part of the business. I don’t believe in a business that is all yours and grows only organically,” Socol says.
Her company was established after a team from French Siveco Group, which specialized in maintenance software came in Romania in 1990 looking for people to assemble a team to test the software developed in India. This is how Irina Socol and Alexandru Radasanu were chosen. After a training period in India, the two came back in Romania and established Siveco, which had a contract with the French group. The company’s revenue at first was $3,000.
In mid nineties the two decided to do more than maintenance software and expand so as to create their own intellectual property and go towards innovative technologies.
The two rounds of investment in Siveco, in 2000 and 2005 played a key role in its development, as the new shareholders came with both capital and expertise and contracts.
While in 2000 the investors were individuals from the Netherlands and Switzerland, in 2005, Siveco, which had already reached EUR31 million in revenue, got Intel Capital and Enterprise Investors as shareholders. Other than the capital inflow and opportunities for new contracts, the reason for welcoming the investment funds among shareholders was the access to expertise, required to make the transition from a company with several employees to one with several hundred employees and an international presence, Irina Socol said.
Siveco’s current goal is to derive 60% or 70% of its revenue from exports compared with 40% in 2012.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)