TelStar Gets New Private Equity Support

TelStar Hosted Services and Washington-based private equity firm Williams & Gallagher today announced the purchase of the assets of TouchStar’s Hosted division.

TelStar Hosted Services is a communications-as-a-service organization providing innovative, on demand contact/call center solutions to more than 200 corporate clients. Williams & Gallagher and Grindstone Partners acted as lead on the investment, working with D Partners, a Washington boutique management firm specializing in working with emerging growth companies. James Dunn and Ralph Peluso, founders of D Partners, will serve as CEO and CFO/COO respectively. Dunn and Peluso bring more than 60 years of industry experience to TelStar Hosted Services.

“SMB’s are aggressively looking for inventive yet proven ways to acquire, retain, and service new customers," Dunn said. "Our products bring the proven efficiency of call center products to our clients via the Web without the capital expenditure and excessive IT costs that have traditionally burdened such initiatives. We have the formula for continued success in our feature-rich product offering, strong technical support organization, and our solutions-oriented sales efforts. Our partnership with Williams & Gallagher and Grindstone Partners provides TelStar Hosted Services with the growth capital and industry insights to continue to build stable communication-as-a-service offerings that meet the scalability and security demands of our industry-leading clients.” 

TelStar posted record sales in 2009 and recently doubled its available capacity.

Chris Rieple, formerly of TouchStar, has joined the TelStar Hosted Services executive team as vice president of sales. “We have built our business by exceeding our customer’s expectations,” Rieple said. “The additional financial resources and new executive leadership enable us to expedite our growth plans while continuing to provide an uncompromised client experience.”

TelStar Hosted Services provides communication-as-a-service hosted contact/call center solutions. TelStar serves hundreds of global businesses and call centers from its headquarters in Denver. Its communications-as-a-service suite of offerings include hosted contact/call center solutions, hosted Voice over Internet Protocol telecommunications, on-demand predictive dialing, automated voice messaging, advanced automated call distribution, interactive voice response, recording, and call compliance management.