Awards shine a light on Yorkshire tech stars
Hot on the heels of the 11th annual Northern Tech Awards, LDC Investment Director James Marshall looks at the businesses powering Yorkshire’s technology sector.
Yorkshire’s thriving community of technology businesses recently crossed the Pennines to Manchester to celebrate the industry’s achievements at the Northern Tech Awards.
Organised by GP Bullhound, the event highlighted Yorkshire’s position as one of the UK’s most dynamic and important centres for technology companies. The businesses in our region were well represented at the awards, which ranked the 100 fastest-growing technology companies in the North of England and Scotland and recognised the management teams showcasing excellence in everything from leadership to workplace culture.
Yorkshire’s best and brightest
GP Bullhound celebrated 28 diverse technology businesses from right across Yorkshire. All of which are implementing innovative strategies to drive growth.
We partner with fast growing, medium-sized technology businesses and eight companies in our portfolio were included – each with their own unique offering, but all with the same growth ambitions. Two are based here in Yorkshire – UniHomes and The Building Cost Information Service (BCIS).
UniHomes, which ranked 29th, is a student accommodation portal provider and a Sheffield home-grown success story. We began our partnership with the management team last July to support their continued expansion across the UK and continued investment in their proprietary technology. This month the business announced it now has partnerships with lettings agents in more than 50 UK towns and cities and importantly it was recently certified as a Great Place to Work.
Harrogate-based BCIS is the UK’s leading cost and carbon benchmarking and valuation platform for construction. It is playing a vital role in decarbonisation in the construction industry as the only player in the market that can match cost and carbon data accurately. We backed the management team in June 2022 to support investment in the company’s technology platform and support the launch of new products. Last year, we also supported the acquisition of Griffiths & Hutchins Publications to further expand its offering.
A resilient market for Tech M&A in Yorkshire
The awards also highlighted the resilience of the northern technology M&A market, which has continued to thrive despite a complex economic environment. Yorkshire played a key role in this, and the Overall Judges’ Award went to Bumper – a Sheffield-based FinTech that lets its users split car repair bills – on the back of it raising £40m in Series B Funding in January.
At LDC, we’ve invested more than £780m into 35 fast growing technology businesses since 2012, with partnerships spanning FinTech, EdTech, PropTech, Human Capital Management, software development and tech-enabled service providers. We expect the positive momentum highlighted by this years’ awards to accelerate in the months ahead, as economic conditions improve, and for technology businesses with strong fundamentals to be a key driver of M&A activity in our region.
An example of this is our recent investment in Hull-based Pagabo Group. We backed the management team in March to support a growth strategy underpinned by investment in their technology and plans to continue expanding its team of experienced professionals based across the UK. Pagabo’s procurement frameworks enable organisations to maximise compliance, social value and value for money in supply chains and we expect demand for its services to increase as ESG continues to become an even more critical factor in procurement decisions.
We’re committed to increasing our investment in Yorkshire’s technology businesses and will continue to support our portfolio companies as they fly the flag for the region as a home for the best, most dynamic and fast-growing businesses.
James Marshall is an Investment Director in LDC’s Yorkshire team
