Background
- Rapid Innovation Group worked with Permasense Limited 2010 – 2015.
- Permasense is a provider of differentiated corrosion monitoring technology aimed at the Oil & Gas market.
- The company grew out of Imperial College with the R&D being funded by one of the Oil & Gas supermajors.
Rapid Innovation Group’s brief
- To work hand-in-hand with the CEO from 2010 in taking the company from a single customer entity to one with customers across the world in different segments of the Oil & Gas market.
- Year 1: Negotiate out of exclusivity with the supermajor. Embed the technology with 6 other “early adopters” in the market.
- Year 2: Demonstrate significant growth and repeat orders both from within existing sites and with other sites within groups.
- Year 3: Further demonstrate growth and move towards upstream.
- Year 4: Grow revenues in emerging markets through establishing channel partners in these markets.
- Year 5: Grow revenues through channel partnerships in the Asian and Australian markets as they set up new offices and hired new personnel to cover the Americas and Europe.
Achievements
Year 1:
- Exclusivity relaxation negotiated without surrendering any equity or significant royalty payments.
- 8 new customers proving that the technology had application across the industry, not just for a single customer.
Year 2:
- Revenues of $3.6m.
- Repeat orders from all but 2 of the Year 1 customers.
- 15 New sites.
- Penetration across all the supermajors.
Year 3:
- Revenues of $5.4m.
- 20% of revenues from upstream.
- Customers across 20 countries in all 6 major continents.
- Strategic partnership creating significant value / revenues for the company.
Year 4:
- Revenues of $7.2m.
- Emerging markets constituted a third of revenues.
- Channel partnerships set up in all the major Asian markets.
Year 5:
- Revenues > $10m (40% growth in a down market in Oil and Gas).
- Asia and Australasia expected to comprise more than 30% of yearly revenues.
- Significant new orders in three major Asian markets.
- 6 of 7 channel partnerships delivering revenue.
By the time Rapid Innovation Group stopped working with Permasense, they had a Chief Revenue Officer, a Chief Marketing Officer, 3 additional sales offices (US, Asia-Pacific and Aberdeen) and a team of 10 people in the sales and marketing functions to drive growth across the business across both upstream and downstream.