£1m boost for analytics firm’s international growth plans

A Birmingham digital analytics business has secured £1m of investment to support its global growth plans.

Voxpopme provides innovative video analytics for brands such as Microsoft, Tesco, Verizon and Clorox.

Mercia Technologies’ investment of £1m into the technology company gives the group a direct equity holding of 12.3%. This capital follows on from an initial investment by Mercia’s third party managed funds.

Voxpopme has scaled quickly, growing to 38 people with offices in Birmingham, Salt Lake City, Sydney and London, and the funding will support its further ambitious international growth plans, particularly in the US.

Founded in 2013, Voxpopme has developed a video analytics platform which enables companies to gain a better understanding of consumers’ attitudes and opinions, including the use of facial expression analysis.

Dave Carruthers, co-founder and CEO of Voxpopme, said: “With our cutting-edge technology, deep industry knowledge and international footprint, Voxpopme has built a fully functioning platform to support accelerated growth. It is personally gratifying to see a high-quality investor such as Mercia join our share register ahead of what, we believe, will be a period of significant commercial progress. We look forward to continuing to develop our partnership with Mercia, which has shown great confidence in our disruptive approach.”

Dr Mark Payton, CEO of Mercia Technologies, said: “Having worked closely with Voxpopme, we have seen the business grow rapidly both in Europe and the US. We are pleased to continue to support Voxpopme as it joins our direct investment portfolio of ‘Emerging Stars’. This is another example of the Mercia Model sourcing and scaling a high-quality technology business from the UK regions that we firmly believe will become a successful, valuable international businesses delivering meaningful shareholder returns over the medium term.”