Published on the 06/06/2016 | Written by Beverley Head

Australian listed business Skyfii, which deploys opt in WiFi in public areas, collects customer data and sells it to local businesses, is making a push into the US and UK…

Wayne Arthur, Skyfii CEO, said that today around 90 per cent of the company’s business was in Australia and New Zealand – but his ambition is to bump up the international portion of revenues to as much as 25 per cent within 18 months.

Westfield malls already bristle with the opt in networks and Skifii has rolled out its system in properties owned by the GPT Group, Mirvac, Blackstone and Jen Properties. It often subcontracts the networking side of the business – it’s the data it wants, said Arthur.

He said that although the use cases for the data were continuing to evolve, retailers were interested to know who their customers were in order to arrange stock and roster staff to meet demand. Though the data is “largely anonymised” according to Arthur, it’s still possible to identify gender, age and time of visit for example.

Following the solution’s success in ANZ, the company has now opened offices in the US and UK, and Arthur himself is planning a partial relocation overseas. Skyfii appointed John Rankin as managing director of the Australian operations and chief operating officer last month.

For the time being Arthur is committed to keeping research and development in Australia, though he said “that’s not to say in a couple of years we wouldn’t consider moving some senior executives.”

Currently the company employs 35 people and in April in an update to the ASX the company said that it had an order pipeline of $49 million assuming the business it was working on came to fruition, and clients signed up for five years.

That said, most of its big deals or renewals thus far are for around three years.

The company listed on the ASX in 2014 through a backdoor listing, taking over coal tenement business RKS Consolidated. Arthur said that float was in order to provide more opportunities for strategic acquisitions in the future, though none were in train at present.

Asked whether the company had sufficient funds to grow the business internationally, or would need to return to the market for more, he acknowledged that; “Depends on how quickly we convert the pipeline.”