Origin to soar on huge investment

Origin Broadband is taking on staff, including salespeople, with the aim of growing from 40 to 85 by the end of the year.

The firm is signing up 300 residential and up to 400 business customers a month, bosses say, and turnover has grown 400 per cent in the last six months. It has 7,000 customers.

The aim is to become a national name, following an injection of cash from three funders.

Origin, based in Armthorpe, was founded by Oliver Bryssau and Henri Wust in 2011 during their final year at university.

Bryssau, the managing director, said: “We are tendering for some massive contracts and our aim is to become a full national operator. We started in 2011 with no staff. Now we have 40 and that figure will rise to 85 by the end of this year.”

Origin has its own equipment in telephone exchanges across the region and has done deals with network owners to give it a national reach. It is the top South Yorkshire supplier of government broadband connection vouchers, worth £3,000 to firms, with 375 of the 501 agreed since April 1.

The company has also won a host of awards, culminating in the British Chamber of Commerce Business of the Year and Young Business Person of the year, for Bryssau, in December.

It hit a low point in August last year when hundreds of customers were cut off without warning after the plug was pulled on the disastrous £100m Digital Region fibre optic network. But it bounced back.

Bryssau added: “We have recovered. It didn’t threaten the business, but we didn’t manage it as well as we would have liked.”

Finance Yorkshire has loaned £350,000. Investment director Paul Gower said: “We see tremendous potential in this business and look forward to supporting them as they add more customers and realise economies of scale.”

HSBC and Finance for Enterprise also backed it.