Mercia invests in two early stage tech businesses
MERCIA Fund Management (MFM) has made investments into two digitally-focused early stage companies.
It is backing Kibbi, a smart home security system, which has received seed funding of £150,000, and Friendly Score, an online credit profiling company, which also received £150,000.
Henley-in-Arden-based Mercia says these two investments will further expand MFM’s digital portfolio.
Kibbi, which was recently a finalist for the British Inventor Award at The Gadget Show 2015, provides an affordable alternative to traditional home security systems.
It comes with a range of features, including a motion detector and high-definition camera, to visually identify an intruder and alert the occupants of the house.
Mike Hayes, investment director and head of digital at MFM, said: “We are pleased to invest in Kibbi, which provides customers with an inexpensive, discreet and highly effective alternative to traditional home security systems.
“Kibbi is part of a fast-growing industry for the UK – The Internet of Things – a fertile ground for start-ups which was predicted by Cisco systems to be worth around £12trillion by 2020.”
Founder and CEO Ronnie Nag said: “We are grateful to MFM for this investment, which will help us move forward to larger scale manufacture of Kibbi.”
London-based Friendly Score is a credit profiling software-as-a-service company that uses a wealth of data across key social media platforms to help build credit risk profiles.
The sophisticated B2B platform, which will be provided to banks, mobile phone companies and credit service providers, uses Natural Language Processing (NLP) Technology to analyse a user’s interactions on social media to build a positive or negative rating.
