Thursday, August 16, 2007

PlumChoice closes new VC round

A Billerica company that provides consumer IT services to national retailers such as Circuit City has closed a second venture round led by New Jersey-based Edison Venture Fund.

PlumChoice Inc. said it plans to use the $4.8 million in venture investment to expand operations, development, marketing and sales.

The investment follows a strong year of employee growth for PlumChoice -- the company quadrupled its payroll over the past year after being enlisted to provide remote support services for Virginia-based home-electronics retailer Circuit City Stores Inc. under the Firedog brand.

Although the retail market wasn't part of PlumChoice's initial business plan, the company has a similar arrangement with Atlanta-based Earthlink Inc. and recently signed with New York-based software maker CA Inc. to provide remote PC support under its own PlumChoice brand.

As part of the new funding round, Edison general partner Chris Sugden will join the PlumChoice board of directors, as will Ameeta Soni, vice president of marketing and business development at VFA Inc., a Boston-based company that produces facility-management software, officials said.

VFA is also an Edison portfolio company. Other New England-based investments in the Edison portfolio include Marlborough's Blue Cod Technologies Inc., Cambridge's CambridgeSoft Corp. and Burlington's Maptuit Corp.

PlumChoice, founded in 2001, has received backing from angel investors and raised an undisclosed amount of capital during a Series A round in 2006. The company is expanding its business beyond remotely serving PCs to all consumer electronics.