By Business & Finance 
Pictured (L-R): Richard Morton, investment manager, Dublin BIC; Adrian O’Connor, CEO, Benetel; and John Doyle, co-founder and CTO, Benetel
AIB Seed Capital Fund and Dublin BIC today announce that Irish wireless technology company Benetel will add 15 jobs following a successful funding round totalling €750,000.
Benetel is based in Dublin, Ireland and was founded in 2001 by a team of engineers with many years wireless product development and production experience from companies such as Motorola, Lucent Technologies and Kenwood.
The new positions will increase the number of employees at Benetel to 35. Included in the new roles are a number of senior positions. The majority of the mainly technical roles will be for engineers who specialise in small cell technology.
Benetel is on target to achieve more than 80% growth in 2015 compared with the previous year, and is aiming for year-on-year growth of 50% per annum over each of the next three years.
The company is growing its presence in Ireland and in international markets, including the UK, USA, South America and a number of countries across Eastern Europe and Asia.
Founded in 2001, Benetel provides hardware platforms, specialist design services, reference designs and test systems to wireless telecom infrastructure original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). This allows OEMs to radically increase the speed to market of the newest 4G small cell base stations.
In the past year, Benetel has strengthened its board with three new members, notably a new CEO in Adrian O’Connor, who brings with him a wealth of international experience as former director, EMEA sales, for microelectronics at IBM.
Anthony Bermingham, Bloom Equity and Brian McCoy, former managing director of M/A COM have also joined the board as directors with Brian McCoy leading as chairman.
Adrian O’Connor, CEO, Benetel said: “Our growth is integrally linked with our success in both the domestic and international markets. We owe a great deal to the AIB Seed Capital Fund and Dublin BIC, as well as Enterprise Ireland, with whom we’ve been working since 2009.
“The fund managers in AIB Seed Capital Fund have established relationships with key players and partners in the wireless market. Their market knowledge and experience have been a vital support to our growth to date, and it has given us a great deal of confidence to press on with our ambitious future plans.”
Richard Morton, investment manager, Dublin BIC, added: “No one knows wireless like its highly experienced team, who share world-class market knowledge in 4G small cell technology. This announcement is testament to Benetel’s ambition and ingenuity in providing products and design services in this unique market.
