With initial plans to list in the Australian market last year furloughed by the pandemic, Israeli tech company Gefen Technologies is finally joining the dozen Israeli companies on the ASX, having closed their $25 million IPO at the end of last month.

Israel is renowned for their ‘start up culture’, especially in tech, having produced apps like Waze, which was bought by Google for over $1 billion back in 2013.

In line with the tech trend, Gefen is a unique software platform for ‘regulation-heavy industries’ that require agents to sell complex products where human touch, advice and expertise is required.

Currently the main focus is on insurance, financial services and realty with insurance giants TAL, Manulife and Generali Group already amongst their 31 existing clients. The platform allows communication from large companies to the smaller insurance brokers who are selling their products.

The software-as-a-service tech is highly adaptable and could become essential to other industries. The ability for large companies to efficiently distribute their marketing and message to a salesforce, to then sell to customers is critical in an increasingly digital world.

The platform is a scalable solution to streamline processes, with significant growth opportunities. This is primarily due to the large addressable markets within highly regulated and compliance focused sectors. The insurance and financial services sectors have total addressable markets of approximately $358 billion and $462 billion respectively.

Founded in 2014 by former lawyer David Nash, IT systems architect Elad Daniel, and former member of the Israeli air force Orni Daniel, the trio has seen the Company go from strength to strength.

The digitisation of almost all business processes accelerated by the pandemic was the catalyst for their 2020 revenue of $16.4 million, a 264% Compounded Annual Growth Rate on the previous year which yielded $4.5 million.

Since 2016 Gefen has secured over USD $14 million in venture capitalist support, plus a $6.5 million sum from two oversubscribed pre-IPO funding pushes in Australia. The Company piqued the interest of Regal Funds Management and Ellerston Capital who both bought in.

25 million shares will be issued from the IPO at $1 per share. The expected market cap following the offer is $128 million.

Funds raised will primarily be utilised to expand sales and marketing and develop the business further through research and development.

As the world becomes increasingly digital, Gefen Technologies is in a unique position to grow and potentially corner the market becoming an essential player in the agent based sales game.

RM Corporate Finance and Morgans Corporate acted as Joint Lead Managers for the IPO which was not underwritten. Gefen is expected to commence trading on the ASX under the indicative ticker GFN on 17 June 2021.