Business Growth Fund completes £2.5m investment in software firm
THE Birmingham-based Business Growth Fund has completed its latest deal – a £2.5m investment in a software firm specialising in data handling.
Celaton, based in Milton Keynes, was created through the MBO of Redrock Technologies from Netstore plc and the subsequent acquisition of DG Tech Ltd.
The company’s cloud-based inSTREAM™ product automates the handling of inbound data streams such as customer correspondence, financial documents, employee records, legal matter and insurance claims that are received by post, paper, email, fax, mobile or other electronic means.
Predominantly from retail, travel, insurance and professional services sectors, Celaton’s customers include Asos.com, The Carphone Warehouse and TalkTalk.
In its financial year June 2012 the company delivered revenues of £2.2m. The investment of growth capital from BGF will support the accelerated development of a sales and marketing infrastructure in support of increased sales to the public and private sectors.
Rob Wirszycz, chairman of Celaton for three years, will stay on the board as non-executive director and Tim Bittleston, who was introduced to the company through BGF’s Talent Network, becomes the new chairman. Tim Whittard, Investment Director at BGF, joins the board as the funding body’s representative.
This is the fourth investment to be led by BGF’s Midlands regional team and Celaton is the fifth IT-enabled service business to be backed by BGF.
Other investments in the sector include online employee reward and benefit scheme provider Benefex, independent telecoms and data services provider GCI Com, cloud-enabled document collaboration software SkyDox and Broadbandchoices.co.uk, a leading UK provider of home communications price comparison services.
Wragge & Co supplied legal advice to BGF, with financial due diligence coming from HMT Corporate Finance. Celaton received legal advice from Shoosmiths and corporate finance and tax advice from Mazars.
Mr Whittard said: “Celaton has the enviable combination of a truly disruptive software offering and a hugely experienced management team and as such, we were convinced that it is a company with huge growth potential and ready to take on expansion capital in order to take the business to the next stage.”
