About AccessPay

AccessPay is a fintech business that works with enterprise customers, integrating their accounting software and back-office systems with their banks. Using AccessPay, businesses can reduce manual data entry and improve overall cash management and control, safeguarding their transactions and automating functions for a more efficient finance operation.

Why we backed AccessPay

AccessPay is a business we had followed for some time prior to our investment. It has a very impressive cap table, which includes both Mastercard and NatWest. In addition, the business is led by a very backable founder and CEO in Anish Kapoor, who previously founded Telecity ahead of exiting it two years after a £436m IPO. Anish also founded YuuGuu – a desktop sharing and web conferencing application bought by PowWowNow.

About AeroCloud

AeroCloud has created a SaaS-based operating system for commercial and general airports, providing everything from flight tracking, gate management and lease management to tickets, anonymised customer tracking and flight information boards. To date, the business has focused on the secondary airport market, which is greatly underserved and accounts for 3000 airports in the US and Europe.

Why we backed AeroCloud

AeroCloud is backed by a first-rate management team with prior aviation and global operational experience. The business also reached $2m ARR within two years of commercialisation, counting airports in Manchester, Eindhoven, Tampa, and Orange County as clients. AeroCloud also has a large addressable market, where Microsoft Excel is its main competitor in the secondary airport space.

About Arctic Shores

Arctic Shores specialises in psychometric online job assessments which are used to help employers hire staff without risk of unconscious bias. Potential hires take an assessment as part of the interview process. This assesses a candidate’s soft skills and their fit for a job, helping employers to make the right decision when hiring.

Why we backed Arctic Shores

Right now employers are facing a significant skills shortage and having to select candidates from a limited talent pool. To help employers overcome these challenges, Arctic Shores is using its platform to unearth quality candidates who may be overlooked in the traditional CV process, which it describes as outdated. The team has already supported major names such as Vitality, PwC and TalkTalk.

About BankiFi

BankiFi is a fintech company that aims to alleviate the common headaches SMEs face when operating a business. Its platform, which is sold to banks to help them better service SMEs, rolls invoicing, payments, collections, accounting and tax into one.

Why we backed BankiFi

BankiFi’s founder, Mark Hartley, is well known in fintech. Before BankiFi, he helped scale and exit Clear2Pay for €375m. Mark is also highly experienced in selling to banks and has an incredible network to help scale BankiFi, including FIS and Visa.

About BlueSkeye AI

BlueSkeye AI is leading advancements in the digital health and wellbeing space through artificial intelligence and machine learning. Through its expertise, the company is making it easier to detect and diagnose mental health conditions and enhance people’s wellbeing.

Why we backed BlueSkeye AI

Founder Michel Valstar spent 15 years developing his award-winning company. A world-leader in his field, he has also been published in over 100 journals. In addition, the scope of BlueSkeye AI’s tech is far-reaching, with use cases across the health and automotive sectors, where legislative focus around driver and passenger safety is increasing.

About CloudGuard

CloudGuard is a cybersecurity company that has created a comprehensive AI-powered platform to provide companies with enhanced protection from threats. The company helps clients to respond to cybersecurity concerns with tools for threat intelligence, static analysis, and dynamic analytics. Founded in 2020, CloudGuard’s mission is to improve security across cloud environments and offer solutions for vulnerability management, risk assessment, and incident response.

Why we backed CloudGuard

We invested in CloudGuard after being impressed by the company’s experienced founding team, which has successfully scaled and exited previous start-ups, as well as its deep technical and commercial expertise, particularly in the Microsoft ecosystem. The company operates in a highly acquisitive sector with strong M&A activity and high EBITDA multiples. Additionally, CloudGuard has demonstrated impressive growth and has a strong pipeline of potential customers.

About Coadjute

Coadjute connects all parties within a property transaction via its innovative blockchain network, making the process of transacting a property faster and more efficient. Capitalising on the growing demand for proptech, Coadjute’s real-time property updates reduce the need for parties within a transaction to chase stakeholders.

Why we backed Coadjute

Coadjute’s solution holds plenty of potential for a property market that’s quickly adapting. Rather than disrupting the market, Coadjute works with existing tech, making adoption easier. As well as being impressed by the tech, Coadjute’s management team and vision also played a key role in our decision to invest.

About Covatic

Covatic works with media companies and broadcasters to deliver targeted advertising and marketing solutions that don’t expose users’ personal data. The company works closely with Comcast, an investor in the business and the owner of Sky, NBC and AT&T, having been through the company’s accelerator programme in 2021.

Why we backed Covatic

Covatic’s technology is cutting edge and perfectly balances advertising effectiveness with data protection and security. In addition, the market for personalised advertising is enormous and the trend of advertisers moving away from cookie-based targeting technology continues to gain pace, as evidenced by the major brands already working with Covatic.

About Culture Shift

Culture Shift is a groundbreaking platform that is working to end bullying and harassment in the workplace and in the classroom. Through anonymous, real-time reporting, Culture Shift is helping more people feel safer at work and during study.

Why we backed Culture Shift

Culture Shift has endless potential as a force for good. As well as securing contracts with universities around the country, the business continues to generate new pipeline leads via the health and public sectors, increasing its ARR significantly.

About Cyclr

Cyclr specialises in embedding integrations (iPaaS) into the SaaS companies it supports, enabling SaaS companies to connect customer data with third-party tools and software. By handling and maintaining integrations, Cyclr’s essential work takes the burden off a company’s developers, so they can focus on revenue driving activities instead.

Why we backed Cyclr

SaaS businesses depend on integrations, which makes Cyclr’s revenue very sticky. In addition, the iPaaS sector is now booming, with Cyclr boasting a strong addressable market. As well as having a very backable management team, our decision to invest was driven by the fact Cyclr is accelerating in all areas, with a pipeline and commercial strategy that we believe will see its growth continue.

About Cytix

Cytix provides specialist cybersecurity services to companies by identifying high risk vulnerabilities during code development. By providing an alternative solution to most automated testing, Cytix is able to spot threats earlier and catch vulnerabilities that can be missed by companies and their cybersecurity partners.

Why we backed Cytix

Cytix demonstrated many positive indicators at the time of our investment alongside clear plans for the future. The founding team had also worked together for eight years and have created a platform that creates collaboration between security and development teams, which has significant benefits as the demand for sophisticated cybersecurity grows.

About Decently

Decently is the company behind the healthcare platform Melo, which enables clinicians and hospital staff to track patient behaviour on brain trauma wards to prevent adverse episodes. Melo’s main focus is patients recovering from an acquired brain injury, which relates to non-birth related trauma – e.g., as a result of being in a coma.

Why we backed Decently

Decently replaces largely manual forms of data capture, which is time-consuming and a burden on stretched healthcare staff, with an easy-to-use dashboard and tools. What led us to invest was Decently’s impressive management team and the fact the company is addressing an unmet need. In addition, at the time of investment, Decently had pilots in the Northern Care Alliance NHS Foundation Trust, Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust and Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust.

About EarSwitch

EarSwitch is an innovative medtech company specialising in in-ear biometric sensor technology. The company’s key proposition, EarMetrics®, provides clinicians with credible, real-world health data that’s racially inclusive and non-intrusive. EarMetrics® can be integrated into wearables, hearing aids and hand-held diagnostic health devices.

Why we backed EarSwitch

EarSwitch’s mission is to transform healthcare, including how conditions are diagnosed. The company’s technology is highly impressive, and the business itself is one of eight selected to join the UK Government’s Innovative Devices Access Pathway (IDAP) pilot scheme. This is a collaboration between the National institute for Health and Care Excellence, NHS England and the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency to accelerate ground-breaking medical devices.

About Enthuse

Enthuse is the UK’s second-largest charity fundraising platform behind JustGiving, raising over £100m for charity. Enthuse encourages repeat donations by inspiring direct relationships between supporters and each charity – not the donation brand.

Why we backed Enthuse

Enthuse has rapidly grown to become the no.2 player in the charitable donations space, presenting an opportunity to win even more market share in the UK and grow overseas. All of this combined makes Enthuse an attractive acquisition target.

About Feedstock

Feedstock’s highly intuitive Client Relationship Analytics system (CRA) rivals manual CRM tools by going deeper to help businesses monitor and sustain valuable client relationships. With CRA, businesses have better access to crucial insights.

Why we backed Feedstock

Global financial firms and brands in diverse sectors are utilising Feedstock’s intelligent services. An experienced board is also helping Feedstock unlock new opportunities in an area of digital where the demand for in-depth data is only growing.

About Fluid.work

Fluid.work’s all-in-one business management tool addresses the disconnect between teams and processes that use multiple work management programs by bringing everything together in one solution. Combining visual dashboards with intuitive integration, Fluid.work’s mission is to tackle unproductive meetings, unclear communications and automate time consuming tasks, freeing up more time for teams that use Fluid.work.

Why we backed Fluid.work

As well as being impressed by Fluid.work’s management team, we felt the company has developed a mature product in a market that’s well-established and growing. The company has won significant global clients, such as Herbalife, Investec, Santander and Walmart. A human-supported SaaS approach also sets Fluid.work apart from its competitors, with significant resource dedicated to account management and onboarding.

About Futr

Futr’s mission is to deliver superpowers to critical service teams. From intelligent self-serve chatbots to making live chat agents instantly multilingual in over 100 languages, Futr is transforming the way organisations serve their audiences.

Why we backed Futr

Futr’s leading natural language platform is gaining traction in social housing, retail, university, government, charity and the police, where it’s speeding up response times. Futr is also helping suicide charity CALM save lives with 24/7 support.

About HURR

HURR is an online fashion rental platform that combines a peer-to-peer marketplace with a while label SaaS solution centred around enabling consumers to rent high fashion garments. HURR is partnered with a number of major retailers including, Net-A-Porter and John Lewis, and powers 130+ top brands, including renowned names such as Ganni and Mulberry.

Why we backed HURR

HURR’s highly backable founder Victoria Prew describes the company as the next-big-thing in fashion, and there is plenty of evidence to back this up, with celebrity endorsements and a 4.7 Truspilot rating from 12k reviews. Along with the rising demand for fashion rental solutions among consumers, HURR is very sustainability-focused, bucking the trend of fast fashion with quality pieces that can be worn and enjoyed time and again.

About Illuma

Illuma has created a highly innovative contextual advertising platform that enables advertisers to target specific audiences without the use of cookies, enabling the world’s biggest brands to maximise their ROI and make better ad placement decisions in real-time.

Why we backed Illuma

Trusted by global brands such as Sky, VW and Coca-Cola, Illuma’s technology enables advertisers to consider sophisticated details like article sentiment and reader mindset before placing ads. This is an industry first that is hugely valuable amid plans to phase out cookies.

About Inotec

Inotec has created an award-winning medical treatment called NATROX® Oxygen Wound Therapy, which uses a small wearable device to heal complex wounds. Early success has also led the Cambridge company to open its first NATROX® clinic in Kuala Lumpur.

Why we backed Inotec

Inotec’s best-in-class device is backed by founders who have exited medtech businesses. Despite COVID, NATROX® is growing in South America and Asia, with significant success due in the US from Wound Care Clinics, Veteran Affairs and clinician sales.

About LCC

LCC is a leading chemical technology company that manufacturers chemical building blocks called chiral components. Pharmaceutical companies use chiral components to create new compounds, which are needed to test and develop new drugs.

Why we backed LCC

LCC’s unique process routes and IP mean the company can create compounds that others cannot. LCC’s work also speeds up the drug development process, which can save pharmaceutical companies valuable time while making processes more efficient.

About LightOx

LightOx was founded by Carrie Ambler (CSO) and professor of Biosciences at Durham University and Dr Sam Whitehouse (CEO). The company is developing a treatment that will replace painful and highly invasive surgery or radiotherapy in patients with oral epithelial dysplasia (OED), a serious pre-cancerous condition affecting the mouth.

Why we backed LightOx

OED affects 3% of the global population, but some treatments can be damaging to patients. For instance, cutting tissue from the mouth has been found to leave 95% of patients with life altering consequences, highlighting a clear need for LightOx’s first-in-class topical drug, which is activated by UV light.

About Lunio

Lunio’s technology specialises in tackling global ad fraud by combatting invalid and fraudulent traffic, which is usually caused by bots. Founded in 2018 by Neil Andrew, the Manchester-based business works with top global brands such as HUGO BOSS and M&S, enabling performance marketers to drive more commercial value and incremental success.

Why we backed Lunio

Lunio’s research shows that one in 12 paid ad clicks are invalid, which translates to around $205bn in lost revenue opportunities in 2024 alone. This highlights the global scale of this issue as well as a growing addressable market for Lunio. The founder and CEO, Neil, has built a fantastic team and product, and the business is at the heart of a transformative period for ad and marketing tech.

About Maxwellia

Maxwellia is changing the face of medicine by switching prescription drugs to over the counter consumer products. Led by pharmacist Anna Maxwell, Maxwellia has recruited bright experts from GSK, Boots, J&J and Boehringer Ingelheim.

Why we backed Maxwellia

Maxwellia’s impressive work helps GPs and pharmacies by empowering people to manage their everyday health. The team’s glowing track record now includes the launch of Lovima®, one of the first over the counter versions of the contraceptive pill.

About Modern Milkman

Modern Milkman is reimagining the milk round by connecting consumers with sustainable produce, including locally sourced dairy and fresh fruit and veg. Prioritising plastic-free packaging and reusable glass to reduce waste, Modern Milkman’s eco-friendly focus has also stopped over 50 million plastic bottles from entering the environment.

Why we backed Modern Milkman

Founded in 2018 by Simon Mellin, Modern Milkman has demonstrated headline-grabbing growth, earning it the title of 2022’s fastest-growing Northern tech company. Modern Milkman also utilises Peak AI’s Decision Intelligence platform to map out milk routes and assess demand, putting it at the cutting-edge of the grocery sector and aiding its expansion across the UK and Europe.

About Ocula

Ocula is an innovative Retail Tech business that uses AI to optimise product pages at scale for online retailers and global brands. The company alleviates the largely manual process of updating product copy and optimising product pages for SEO by automating the process for its customer base, which includes major retailers in various sectors.

Why we backed Ocula

Ocula performed significantly well during customer reference calls in the due diligence phase and demonstrated rapid growth in the lead up to our investment. The business is led by two very capable founders, and there is clear evidence of retailers increasing their conversion success as a result of using Ocula’s AI platform.

About Patchwork

Patchwork was founded to help ease the staffing crisis faced by the NHS and health sector. Working with 60 UK-wide NHS partners, Patchwork is bringing flexibility to staff and employers through its intuitive end-to-end workforce management offering.

Why we backed Patchwork

Patchwork is growing quickly and has a real opportunity to displace existing solutions across the entire NHS rostering space. The company’s founders, who are ex-doctors, are also closer to the problem they’re trying to solve than many others.

About Peak

Peak specialises in Decision Intelligence, which is the commercial application of AI to grow profit and revenue. Peak’s approach combines complex data points with tailored AI to help brands like AO.com and PrettyLittleThing make better decisions.

Why we backed Peak

Peak has an incredible client base that stretches across multiple diverse industries. This includes FMCG giants like Pepsico and international retailers like Nike and ASOS, all of which are contributing to Peak’s world-class SaaS metrics.

About Percayso

Percayso is a data enrichment business which services the general insurance sector. Percayso’s next generation insurance intelligence adds further value to powerful datasets to prevent fraud, help insurers compete on price comparison sites and reduce risk levels.

Why we backed Percayso

Percayso’s founder, Simon James, has already achieved great success in this space, having scaled and sold a similar company for £82m. Simon, who is well-known in the insurance space, still believes there is a major opportunity in the insurance data market, and has established Percayso to act as a competitor to his former business.

About Placed

Placed is a mobile-first and SaaS-based recruitment platform that connects employers with millennial and Gen Z talent. Instead of CVs, Placed matches candidates using questionnaires to assess job suitability. The platform also enables employers to post engaging content.

Why we backed Placed

Placed differentiates from the competition by enabling brands to interact, market and communicate with candidates within the platform. As brands are charged for access to the platform, there is a clear recurring revenue model. In addition, Placed already counts a number of major brands as clients, including E.On and Burger King.

About RapidSpike

RapidSpike’s award-winning website performance and security service interacts with sites via a consumer interface to better the digital experience. The company also alerts sites to cyber risks, user data theft and performance or reliability issues.

Why we backed RapidSpike

RapidSpike’s clients include major names like William Hill, Matalan, Whittard of Chelsea and The Hut Group. RapidSpike is also the only solution of its kind focusing on performance, reliability and security, setting it apart in several growing and competitive digital sectors.

About Reacta

Reacta is modernising the process of testing for food allergies with what is believed to be the world’s first regulated and controlled oral food challenge. The result is a more effective and potentially safer test for undiagnosed individuals.

Why we backed Reacta

The allergen market is global and growing, with clinical trials underway and new treatments incoming. Through its vital MHRA-approved work, Reacta has attracted a major pharmaceuticals contract and further opportunities are expected.

About Recourse AI

Re:course AI has been described as a flight simulator for the healthcare and life sciences industry. The technology trains clinicians by enabling them to interact with computer automated avatars, with real voices, instead of human patients. This enables clinicians to practise their approach and conversational delivery before entering the field.

Why we backed Recourse AI

Re:course AI is putting safety and ethics at the heart of its development process, which has been welcomed by the healthcare community and investors alike. We invested because we believe the company has the potential to disrupt the healthcare and life sciences space, having already been integrated into healthcare institutions in the US and UK.

About Ruuby

Ruuby has revolutionised the beauty industry by offering a seamless and user-friendly platform for on-demand beauty services. Since its inception, Ruuby has delivered nearly 500,000 services across multiple categories, including hair, nails, massage, waxing, IV drips, and cosmetic injectables.

Why we backed Ruuby

Ruuby is fast becoming a household name in beauty, with a long list of major businesses and known luxury brands as clients, including hotels. We also backed Ruuby on the basis of its commitment to continue its expansion into the North West, where it has already had prior success.

About ScubaTx

ScubaTx is a medtech company and Newcastle University spinout that has created a unique device to preserve donated organs and drive efficiencies in the organ transplant space. ScubaTx’s device utilises a technology called persufflation, which cools and oxygenates tissues with humidified gas at tightly controlled pressures and flow rates.

Why we backed ScubaTx

About Seatfrog

Seatfrog has created a tech platform that enables rail passengers to easily upgrade their seat to first class or switch trains. The benefit to rail companies is the opportunity to increase margin on under-utilised first-class services and sell additional capacity. Through Seatfrog, passengers have saved more than £43m.

Why we backed Seatfrog

Seatfrog has exclusive long-term contracts of between 3 and 5 years with all UK rail operators, giving the company a level of exclusivity over 2,400 destinations. SF also integrates with each train operator’s backend, providing rail operators with key data and insights, which sets the company apart from companies like the Trainline. We also invested in Seatfrog on the back of strong customer feedback, with a 4.6/5 average rating from 17k reviews.

About Sparkbox

Sparkbox uses AI and in-depth data to help big brand merchandising teams make better stock buying and pricing decisions. Trusted by major retailers such as River Island and Matchesfashion.com, their solution dramatically reduces waste and the need to heavily discount inventory.

Why we backed Sparkbox

With 50 years’ worth of global retail experience between them, Sparkbox’s founders are well poised to modernise the stock and inventory world. Two of the founders, Lindsay and Matthew, are Forbes 30 under 30 inductees. Their co-founder Kevin was previously Vice President of Customer Insights at Best Buy and a retail analytics partner at Accenture.

About Sprout AI

Sprout AI is a claims automation engine, designed to automate the end-to-end claims process for high volume and typically low value insurance claims. By replacing human-led processes that are largely manual, slow and prone to error, Sprout helps to raise the customer experience, preventing high levels of customer churn.

Why we backed Sprout AI

Sprout AI has long-term partnerships with three of the top ten global insurers (Axa, MetLife and Generali) and a management team with strong technical and commercial skills. We also identified Sprout as being an enterprise-level tech solution that is solving a significant problem for global insurers, with multiple machine learning models for high levels of accuracy.

About SteamaCo

SteamaCo is helping to transform the energy industry in Southeast Asia and Africa, where it provides advanced Internet of Things (IoT) technology to service both the on-grid and solar off-grid utility markets.

Why we backed SteamaCo

COVID has meant setbacks for SteamaCo. But with a new focus on Nigeria’s grid sector, where theft costs utility companies $1.6bn a year, there is an opportunity for SteamaCo’s renewable energy expertise, particularly after the UN’s Climate report.

About Sticky

Sticky specialises in near field-communication technology in the form of customisable branded stickers which, when interacted with, enable customers to order and pay, virtually queue, donate and more. The company has also developed a low code/no code platform, enabling brands to maximise their outdoor retail space.

Why we backed Sticky

We invested in Sticky on the strength of its self-serve backend platform, customer referencing and go to market partners, the calibre of which we seldom come across at this stage. This includes Elite Dynamics, which works with holiday parks, and WorldPay, which has access to large retail and hospitality opportunities worldwide. Other major clients include Costa Coffee and Byron Burger.

About Taveo

Taveo (formerly Hubb) is a tech-enabled insurance broker, which targets the SME market by using a suite of technology tools, such as AI, to reduce the administration burden on brokers. Taveo also uses tech to reduce costs, improve efficiency and reduce human biases in a space that has seen little innovation to date.

Why we backed Taveo

The Taveo team are focused on the industry’s shortfalls and the company’s highly backable founders have a clear vision of the industry’s future, which they see as being fully digitised through AI, automation and data science. These technologies enable Taveo to reduce SME insurance costs by 30% not to mention their ability to add transparency to process.

About The Padel Club

The Padel Club is a fast-growing leisure club specialising in the popular racquet sport padel. Headquartered in Cheshire, it is the first business in the county to secure Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund II (NPIF II) funding. The Padel Club is rapidly expanding with new nationwide facilities, taking the business far beyond its early successful beginnings in Wilmslow.

Why we backed The Padel Club

The scale of The Padel Club’s ambitions (42 new courts by 2025) instantly impressed us, as did founder and CEO Kris Ball, whose background includes leading premium racquet and fitness clubs for over 14 years. The Padel Club’s facilities are immensely popular and the game is quickly becoming one of the fastest-growing sports in the UK, with a global fanbase that’s only growing.

About Transreport

TransReport is a SaaS company that helps transport providers monitor, facilitate and act on passenger feedback more efficiently. The company covers all areas of transport, including the rail sector, where it has several long-term contracts.

Why we backed Transreport

TransReport’s early success has led to a contract from National Rail to roll out its Passenger Assistance app, which serves disabled passengers. This news, and the company’s scope to take on Europe and other travel sectors, is very exciting.

About WatchMyCompetitor

WatchMyCompetitor (WMC) uses cutting-edge artificial intelligence to monitor competitors, clients, regulators and key partners, making the process of scraping and obtaining crucial data simple and intuitive. This enables marketing, product and sales teams to respond to real-time developments.

Why we backed WatchMyCompetitor

WMC was born out of a real-life business need and is already attracting global customers in multiple sectors, all of which often have to be across multiple channels at once. WMC’s platform delivers what every management team needs to make the best decisions – the right information in real time.

About wi-Q

wi-Q is a SaaS business that specialises in innovative mobile ordering and payment solutions, which give customers the ability to order food, drinks and other services from their mobile, quickly and easily. These solutions are used by a broad range of hospitality clients, including the world’s top hotel chains. wi-Q also works with home delivery brands and fast casual dining restaurants.

Why we backed wi-Q

In addition to wi-Q’s work with a number of major hospitality brands, we were impressed by the company’s backable CEO and senior leadership team as well as its expansion plans, which include growth in the US and Asia-Pacific regions. Mobile ordering technology, including that offered by wi-Q has also become the norm post-covid, with the sector expected to surpass £159bn in the next several years.

About XR Games

XR Games is vying to become the leading games developer in the AR/VR gaming space. XR’s titles, including The Angry Birds Movie 2 VR: Under Pressure and Zombieland: Headshot Fever, have garnered critical acclaim and praise from giants like Sony.

Why we backed XR Games

XR Games has earned a reputation for developing blockbuster games, with a client list that includes Sony, Rovio, Dreamworks, BBC and Lego. XR’s team also boasts big-game experience from major studios like Rockstar, EA, Codemasters and Sumo.