Growing tech businesses selected for scale-up programme

Two West Midlands companies are among 30 companies that have been selected for the Tech Nation’s Upscale programme, which works with fast-growing and ambitious start-ups to boost their growth.

Birmingham’s Voxpopme and Coventry’s Fertility Focus are part of a cohort which is dominated by companies based in London. Only one of the 30 is located north of Birmingham – Edinburgh-based fintech company LendingCrowd.

The fast-growing startups were selected for the Tech Nation programme from over 100 applications and will be coached over the next six months by some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs and company founders.

Margot James, Creative and Digital Industries Minister and MP for Stourbridge, said: “The UK is Europe’s undisputed tech hub and much of our success is down to the ambition of fast-growth companies like these.”

Voxpopme is a Birmingham-based market analytics company that helps brands and companies conduct market research via video, both online and offline. It operates in the UK, the US and Australia.

Dave Carruthers, founder at Voxpopme, said: “The ever-increasing appetite for video customer feedback has taken our video insight platform from fledgling startup to a global, enterprise-level technology solution in a relatively short space of time.

“Scaling at such speed inevitably presents new challenges and we’re excited to learn from Upscale’s scale coaches as we look to recruit more talent, maintain our carefully crafted culture and build on our first-class roster of international clients.”

Fertility Focus is a Coventry-based health tech startup which uses medical advances in infertility treatment to helps couples to increase their chances of getting pregnant. It offers two products that are approved for all major markets, including OvuSense, a sensor and fertility app which can predict ovulation.

Rob Milnes, founder and chief executive of Fertility Focus, said: “Fertility Focus aims to half the time to pregnancy for couples – particularly those struggling to conceive. Our OvuSense fertility monitor has already been used in over 50,000 cycles helping to predict ovulation, diagnose ovulatory disorders and track medication should it be needed.

“The company is delighted to be joining Upscale which will not only help us to grow sustainably, but also enable us to continue our work to help millions of couples around the world achieve their dream of conceiving a child.”