Mercia ups investment in VR specialist nDreams by £2m

Bloody Zombies - by nDreams

Specialist funder Mercia Technologies has completed a follow-on investment of £2m in one of its portfolio companies.

The Henley-in-Arden based company, which is focused on high growth potential technology companies, has invested the funds in virtual reality specialist nDreams.

Mercia’s investment into nDreams is part of a £2.7m funding round alongside sophisticated private investors, that has been accompanied byb a series of board changes at the technology firm.

It also increases the capital invested by Mercia into the business to £7.1m and results in a 45.6% equity shareholding.

Mercia said that as the VR market continued to expand, the additional capital would be used to support the release of new games and experience titles throughout 2017, including the latest of its five VR experiences, Bloody Zombies, which won a Best of VR Game Award at the 2017 E3 event in Los Angeles last month.

Board changes at nDreams have seen Paul Fitzsimons, a former partner at private equity group, Apax Partners, appointed chairman. Rob Precious, the former director of business development at Geomerics/ARM, becomes a non-executive director.

The latest investment and recent additions to the board come at the same time that Farnborough-based nDreams has signed a significant deal to bring exclusive new content to a major VR arcade company. The move into the VR arcade space follows a successful 12 months for the business with content released on PC, console and mobile VR platforms, and is one of a number of recent deals with key third party partners.

Patrick O’Luanaigh, CEO and founder of nDreams, said: “Mercia’s continued support bolsters our relentless ambition to remain at the forefront of VR. nDreams has expanded rapidly over the past 12 months leading to exciting commercial opportunities, including our move into VR arcade content and our continued focus on creating innovative VR content for home use. We are also delighted to welcome Paul and Rob to the board, who both bring a wealth of experience and insight to the team.”

Mike Hayes, Investment Director at Mercia Technologies, said: “nDreams continues to thrive within the VR market, a sector expected to be worth in excess of $30bn by 2020. Its growing reputation as one of the UK’s leading developers and publishers of VR content demonstrates the significant progress that the company has made this year with many of the major hardware brands, in this rapidly growing market. We are delighted to continue back this industry-leading team.

“We believe that continuing to invest in nDreams and other high growth companies across the Digital and Digital Entertainment sector will strengthen our ability to build significant shareholder value.”

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