Irish email developer nets €1.25m in funding


17 Aug 2006

BrandMail Solutions, an Irish firm that has developed a secure branded email product, has received €1.25m in first-round funding.

The funding round was led by the Dublin-based auditing, taxation and business advisory firm Cooney Carey.

BrandMail Solutions is an Irish-headquartered company with an American operations centre in Palo Alto in California’s Silicon Valley. The firm is a pioneer in the area of email branding and rebuilding public trust in email.

BrandMail Solutions built the Verified Mail system to secure and brand email for corporate senders, their customers and ISPs or webmail providers. It claims that its product ensures that only genuine emails from legitimate email senders, such as banks, airlines and other online operators, are delivered to the end-user.

Emails delivered using BrandMail stand out in the recipient’s inbox as they include the sender’s brand logo in the ‘from’ field, along with a secure icon. According to BrandMail, the icon assures the recipient that the sender is genuine and that the message comes from a legitimate source. The BrandMail system also discards any spoofed or ‘phishing’ emails before the recipient ever sees them.

Noel Ruane, founder and managing director of BrandMail Solutions, said that the product had been well received by email users and senders and said that the company planned further announcements soon. He said the company had been operating under the radar for the past 18 months and is expected to announce a product launch with a leading ISP and several international brands.

Ruane is a former vice-president of business development for IDA Ireland and has been based in Palo Alto for the past four years. He was the overseas officer when IDA Ireland won several high-profile investment projects for Ireland including Google, Yahoo!, Amazon, eBay and Paypal.

By Gordon Smith