Melbourne-based entrepreneurial advisory business, EIA, has gone to market to raise up to $15m in growth capital following an incredible growth story.
Founded in 2015 as the head entity for entrepreneurial advisory firm BlueRock, EIA has fuelled BlueRock’s growth from an accounting practice of $6m in revenue in 2015 to a multi-award-winning, B Corporation-certified professional services firm that turned over close to $30m in 2021. This demonstrates 1,000% revenue growth in BlueRock over the last nine years.
BlueRock now employs more than 230 people across accounting, law, wealth, finance, digital, insurance and international divisions, and offers multidisciplinary services to a broad range of over 4,000 corporate and private clients in Australia. The company is on target to make over $40m in revenue this financial year to end June 2022 with strong profits.
“The vision is clear. Client-centric and culture-led businesses that combine their strong purpose with a clear vision on how to automate using technology will be the winners in a quickly evolving world,” said EIA’s founder, Peter Lalor. “We’re already working with amazing entrepreneurs through businesses like BlueRock to achieve this. Now it’s time to take it to the next level.”
The use of funds raised by EIA will be two-fold:
- To grow the BlueRock brand and business through interstate and international acquisitions, and expanding into new markets.
- To invest and acquire in a wide range of professional services technology that can be utilised to disrupt the delivery of professional services for automated and augmented results that can improve the delivery of BlueRock’s services and use the expanded business as a distribution platform.
Some capital will also be allocated to investing in best-of-breed BlueRock clients.
BlueRock is already known for doing things differently, as one of only a handful of professional services firms that has achieved B Corporation certification in Australia and through the recent launch of its own philanthropic public ancillary fund, the Be BlueRock Foundation. BlueRock’s people-first culture has also led the company to be included on Australia’s Great Place to Work list several years running. BlueRock also boasts a 98% client retention rate which they put down to their unique client service approach, one-stop shop model and growing tech enabled platform.
BlueRock’s quirky brand and reputable service delivery is widely known in the Melbourne business scene but EIA’s growth strategy is set on national expansion in 2021, with one to two offices in every major Australian city and some key regional centres, and international markets in the coming three years. A second Melbourne office is close to being ready to open, and plans to launch in Perth are well advanced. Sydney and Brisbane are also in early discussion. Singapore, London and LA are on the list of international locations to be considered in the near-medium term.
The strategy has been coined “BlueRock 3030” due to its ambitious vision to develop 30 offices around the world that each generate $30m in revenue. EIA and its BlueRock subsidiary have aspirations to be a $500m company within 5 years, with technology supporting EBITDA margins over 30%, and by 2031, they plan to double this valuation number and build up to an $80m EBITDA number.
EIA’s ventures portfolio already has holdings in several 'Prof-Services' technology businesses that provide adjacent services or tactical support to BlueRock and its clients: CCASA Prime (Regtech), Propella.ai (Big Data & Analytics) and Payment Logic (Fintech). These high-growth technology companies have benefited immensely from being part of the EIA and BlueRock communities and are experiencing high growth trajectories.
CCASA, in conjunction with its registry platform Prime, provides technology enabled corporate compliance to leading accounting and law firms around Australia, directly and indirectly servicing a large number of ASIC registered companies and a broad range of clients. Underpinned by four key solutions on its platform, Registry, Document Automation, Managed Corporate Secretarial and Know Your Customer technology, CCASA is used by some of the other biggest accounting and law firms in Australia. Technology-enabled corporate compliance and registry companies are currently seeing amazing growth and interest leading to significant M&A and roll-up activity opportunities in this space.
Propella.ai (known previously as BlueRock Intelligence) was co-founded by EIA and Gus McLennan in 2018. Led by an experienced team of data scientists, software developers and mathematicians, Propella.ai specialises in geo-spatial data analytics solutions for the property industry, solving complex location-based problems. Propella.ai has seen significant growth and now provides geo-spatial data insights to some of the largest commercial property owners and developers in Australia.
EIA continues to seek out synergistic early-mid-stage technology companies operating across all disciplines in the professional services space.
Kylie Leavitt, an advisor to the EIA Innovation team, which undertakes the group's corporate development and M&A work, said, “We are currently running a global process seeking a partnership-style investor to work with us over the next five years or more, as we grow the main BlueRock brand and footprint, and continue to develop our prof-tech ventures portfolio, via technology acquisitions and disruptive initiatives. EIA is at a key inflection point, and on the verge of a significant growth trajectory – using the levers of tech transformation, location expansion, acquisitions and new product growth. It's an exciting time to be in the multidisciplinary professional services space.”
For more information about EIA, contact:
https://www.eiatogether.com.au/
Kylie Leavitt
EIA Growth Consultant
kylie@eiainvestments.com.au
Nick Marshall
EIA Growth Consultant
nick@eiainvestments.com.au
