own branded venture capital fund ,” reveals Homer . “ Telstra Ventures typically invests in second and third round high growth software businesses , which in many cases are cloud based . We ’ ve invested in 50 so far and have seen a few exits so this is a real venture capital business . We recently backed a software defined network business , Velocloud , which was subsequently sold to VMWare .”
Telstra also invests in companies delivering digital transformation services . Among these , DocuSign ( an electronic document management business ) first came onto the company ’ s radar because of a problem on-boarding new members of staff when employment contracts weren ’ t being turned around quickly enough . “ It was taking 28 days with new starters but DocuSign speeded up that process by 90 % and took more than $ 30 out of each transaction ,” remembers Homer . “ This delivers innovation for our customers .” Telstra also works with Whispir , a multimedia messaging platform originally designed to help with natural disasters in Australia where droughts , floods , fires and other extreme weather events are commonplace . “ In that scenario it ’ s a way of communicating with stakeholders , customers and employees in one go across text , voice and social media ,” says Homer .
While Homer admits brand awareness remains a challenge – he jokes that his company sometimes gets confused with Tesla – Homer is confident in Telstra ’ s expertise to explore new frontiers for business . “ We ’ ve got a significant global footprint with a real sweet spot in Asia ,” he confirms . “ A lot of customers come to us for that because they need an Asian specialist . We have a joint venture in China as a majority owner where we ’ re now the largest foreignowned IVPVN provider in the country , so lots of very big organisations are coming to us because of our capability in a region where most large multinationals are growing faster than anywhere else in the world .”
Homer is proud that Telstra brings a challenger mentality to the market , delivering a range of software and networks to help organisations in areas requiring regulatory compliance to deal with GDPR ( through Company85 ) and MiFID . “ We ’ ve also been building a foreign exchange platform for a big global bank ,” he adds . The company ’ s
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