VSware, an Irish cloud and mobile based school administration platform, booked a loss of €571,000 through 2014 as the company grew its market share substantially.

The online VSware platform handles all core school data from attendance, assessments, and behaviour to mandatory returns to the Department of Education. The company says the platform also provides collaborative data management and reporting tools giving school management, administration, teachers and parents the ability to monitor and improve the progress of their students and a real-time view of school activity.

Founded by Steven Kearney and Patrick Barry, VSware was developed ahead of the opening of the Irish school administration market in November 2013, when the Department of Education’s funded central contract with Serco was concluded.

Since then, VSware says it has signed up over 350 secondary schools, close to 50% of the market. The company won a national tender to supply VSware to all Education & Training Board secondary schools and Further Education colleges.

In Association with

VSware has grown to offices in Dublin and Sligo and is also targeting the UK market. Enterprise Ireland invested €250,000 in the company in May 2014 and the operating company, School Thing Ltd, also secured €500,000 convertible loan note funding from Leaf Investments. The company ended 2014 with €257,000 cash and net assets of €227,000.

Leaf Investments is an early stage investor in learning technology businesses funded by school book publishers Folens. Leaf has also invested in TCD spinout Empower The User, and StoryToys, formerly known as Ideal Binary.

The Leaf fund is run by Campus IT chief executive Alan Maguire, former chief executive of Electric Paper, Jonny Parkes, and investment banker Hugh O’Driscoll.

Leaf Investments principals Hugh O’Driscoll (centre) with Jonny Parkes (left) and Alan Maguire