Birmingham tech firm completes £2m deal
A Birmingham technology firm has secured a £2m deal for the distribution of its specialist educational private social network.
The deal sees Tribal Group acquire the intellectual property rights (IPR) and exclusive distribution rights for the technology developed by Innovation Birmingham-based Wambiz.
Tribal is targeting the education markets across the UK, Australia and New Zealand.
Edtech Wambiz will use the invest to focus on expansion into mainland Europe and the United States.
The initial consideration for the acquisition is £1.25m, with further non-contingent consideration of £289,000 and £485,000 payable at the end of years one and two respectively. At Tribal’s discretion, if in years two to five it decides to sell the product into schools and work-based learning customers, the firm will have to pay away 30% of the net revenue from these markets to Wambiz.
The deal also sees Wambiz transfer 34 existing customer contracts to Tribal. The asset value of these contracts and the IPR to be included in Tribal’s accounts is expected to be approximately £2m.
Established in 2013, the Wambiz technology provides a safe means for students to connect, communicate and collaborate with peers, teachers and institutions in an engaging, yet controlled way.
It developed the network in response to the increasing trend among young people moving away from texts and emails to communicating more through social networking.
Wambiz opted to give its technology the same look and feel as the social media platforms students are using everyday in their personal lives.
Harry Jawanda, a Birmingham City University graduate, is CEO and co-founder of Wambiz.
He said: “When I started Wambiz with my business partner Andrew West, we were focused on fast growth.
“The deal with Tribal is our largest to date and it was important for us to find a partner that understands education and could take our solution deeper into that market. We were also delighted that Tribal shared our vision of using private social networks to improve student engagement as the most natural way for students to communicate. Tribal has the resources to extend and grow this functionality in the education markets within their territories whilst allowing Wambiz to focus on the rest of the world.”
The company was enrolled on Innovation Birmingham’s Entrepreneurs for the Future business incubation programme in the pre-revenue stage and received significant support from the Entrepreneurs in Residence programme.
