Birmingham tech firms secure new funding deals

Innovation Birmingham

Companies based at Birmingham’s digital and technology hub, Innovation Birmingham Campus, have been successful in securing funding worth more than £10m.

The final quarter of 2017 saw three companies close successful investment rounds. These included optometry business Aston EyeTech, which secured £5m in November from a series of investors – including specialist funder, Mercia Technologies.

Aston EyeTech builds hardware and software to improve ocular care.

London Stock Exchange-listed smart home technology company LightwaveRF also raised a seven-figure sum, securing £5m to progress product development and sales following a significant deal with Apple.

Database specialist Synapse Information has already secured almost £200,000 as part of a larger investment round, through its current crowdfunding campaign utilising the Shadow Foundr platform. The investment is set to generate growth within the business; in turn supporting the creation of new jobs.

David Hardman, CEO of Innovation Birmingham Campus, said: “It’s extremely encouraging to see such investments supporting the tech innovators on the campus. These significant investment rounds present exciting opportunities for SMEs based here to grow and take on more people to access and disrupt global markets.

“This sort of commitment by investors provides a clear sense of external acknowledgement as to the high quality of investment opportunities there are on our campus.”

In addition to financial successes, start-up companies based at the site have also secured widespread recognition.

As well as being crowned ‘Best British Mobile Start-up’ by KPMG, language learning start-up Learning Labs joined forces with Birmingham City Council in November to help unaccompanied asylum seeker children learn English as a second language. As a result, its pioneering mobile language EAL FlashAcademy app is being recommended to 400 schools in the region.

In its bid to help 50,000 young people into business by 2020, entrepreneurship consultancy Enploy partnered with Birmingham City University’s Faculty of Arts, Design and Media to help graduates develop their entrepreneurial skills through a ten-week workshop programme. Entitled ‘The Next Step’, the programme blends online and face-to-face learning.

Barclays Eagle Labs-based lettings and management tool ‘brightLET’ received widespread recognition for its cloud-based platform, which enables the remote management of properties. The system has been utilised by more than 300 landlords and 600 tenants.

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