[Belgium] Belgium’s OpenERP has just received a €3 million investment from Sofinnova Partners, as well as Iliad co-founder and manager Xavier Niel and board member Olivier Rosenfeld. The funding will be used primarily to reinforce the managerial team and open the company’s first US office in San Francisco.
30-year-old founder and CEO, Fabien Pinckaers, first started the company in 2005 and believes that the investment from Sofinnova Parnters and Xavier Niel mark a new era for the company. OpenERP’s integrated open source ERP software manages various administrative tasks – including purchasing and human resources – and currently has over 500 modules. Pinckaers says he weathered the storm of the financial crisis particularly well as restructuring tends to be very good for enterprise resource planning.
Thanks to the company’s community of over 300 members and integrators, the software is downloaded by more than 1,000 users per day. OpenERP’s client list includes the French postal service and elite French university, l’Ecole Nationale d’Administration in Strasbourg – remember former French President, Jacques Chirac? He went there.
The company’s headquarters are in Grand-Rosière, a rural part of Belgium that happens to be near the Université Catholique de Louvain – which has a large computer science department. OpenERP presently has 75 employees and an additional office in India.