Georgia-based home repair company, Pronto, has set up its North American information technology headquarters in uptown Saint John.
The Saint John office is going to allow for further development of the company’s online Pronto Pro app, which allows homeowners to text their problem to the company, get a flat-rate price and then have someone dispatched in 24 hours to start repairs.
“That’s one of the things that’s really unique in the renovation scene,” says Elad Shalom, the chief technology officer for Pronto Canada. “We see a photograph, we also ask the person to send us a few words about what the problem is…we don’t need to be there to give you a fixed price quote which saves a lot of time from the process.”
Five people are currently working out of the space on the fifth-floor of a Canterbury Street building and two senior developers will be coming to the city in the coming weeks: one from Kiev and the other from Israel through the Atlantic Immigration pilot program, CHSJ News is told. A total of 20 jobs are being created at the HQ over the next four years with the help of payroll rebates of up to $345,000 for the positions from Opportunities New Brunswick. Shalom credits the decision to move to New Brunswick with the payroll rebates from ONB.
“I believe it was the big support that they got from ONB…that made them reach that decision of having the [research and development] division here,” says Shalom. “When they first started to recruit in New Brunswick it was either Saint John or Fredericton, depends on where the talent lies and we ended up with Saint John.”
Shalom concedes while New Brunswick has a lot of talent in terms of IT, some fields are a bit more niche and they need to bring in talent from other places.
“As we continue to expand throughout North America, we will be depending on our app development and quality assurance teams here in Saint John,” CEO of Pronto Erik Stadler said in a release.
ONB says the payroll rebates are only given to a company after it has created and maintained the jobs for a year. The Crown corporation says that the new jobs are expected to generate over $722,540 in provincial income taxes and contribute about $5.8-million to New Brunswick’s GDP over the next four years.
