Maestrano Group PLC (LON:MNO) Chief Executive Officer Stephane Ibos caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss their successful IPO, how their platform works, the market opportunity, how they’ll use the proceeds from the IPO and what we can expect in the coming months.
Q1: First off, congratulations on the successful IPO of Maestrano Group, can you explain for us the background to the company?
A1: We created Maestrano 4.5 years ago and the idea was to help small and medium businesses by solving for them the problem of disparate cloud applications not talking together or exchanging data. So, it’s an integration platform where SME’s can use a variety of applications such as Xero, Sage and these applications come already integrated as if they were the one system. We also have some business analytics, so we have to assist small and medium businesses in the running of their operation.
Q2: Can you tell us how your data management platform actually works?
A2: So, the way it works is we basically built an integration layer with quite advanced technology that we’ve patented and the way it works is we plug in the cloud applications and by doing that they start to have the ability to extend data in real time. We’ve plugged on top of that a big data engine which allows us to provide the business with analytics and reporting.
Q3: How significant is the market opportunity?
A3: It’s quite large, we work through enterprise partners, so we don’t deliver directly our platforms to small and medium businesses, we actually white-label them to large corporations who then use them to address their own SME market. Just to give you a feel, if you look at North America, Europe and Asia specifically, they are north of 60 million small and medium businesses so there’s plenty of potential out there.
Q4: Why did you choose to float on the AIM market and how will you use the proceeds from that?
A4: So, choosing the AIM market is probably because it’s quite a friendly market for early stage ventures and we believe that it gives us the legitimacy and also the credibility that we need at this stage of the company on top of course of raising the funds.
The £6 million we raised for the IPO will be essentially used to further our technology, we’re quite advanced in terms of products and technology so keep having that edge. Also, to expand our reach into the market so acquiring enterprise partners and helping them deliver awesome products for their small and medium businesses.
Q5: What can we expect from Maestrano Group from the year ahead?
A5: Plenty of good things. We will have some, what I believe to be, exciting announcements later in the year, we’ll also have hopefully good numbers in terms of SME’s using our platforms and of course, for those who like the technology, we’ll keep releasing products that would be quite exciting.
