Firms set eyes on growth in latest equity round boost
Here we feature the latest equity investments into Welsh firms to support expansion and job creation plans
TALKATIVE
Digital communications venture Talkative has secured a new equity round of nearly £500,000 to support its growth in the lucrative North American market.
Led by Development Bank of Wales with £200,000, the co-investment comes from its angel investors (£68,000) and Wesley Clover (£200,000).
It brings the total investment into the company by the Development Bank since 2018 to £450,000.
Talkative provides a suite of digital contact channels for the $25 billion global contact centre industry.
Its web-based solutions are designed to humanise the digital journey. Conventionally customers contacting call centre staff need to download customised software or an app.
However, Talkative negates the need for this and enables customers to connect to a call centre agent directly via a web browser using voice, video or messaging services.
The Newport-based venture has grown revenue by 800% since 2018 and developed a customer base that includes global brands like Suzuki and Formula One.
The latest funding round will help develop market opportunities in North America with a focus on recruitment and development of the core product range.
This includes the enhancement of video chat functionality, digital centric customer contact and self-service solutions.
Talkative incorporated after its founders – Felix Winstone and Jakub Srsen – successfully came through the Alacrity Foundation’s graduate entrepreneurship programme in 2016. It is now based at the Wesley Clover Innovation Centre in Newport.
Mr Winstone said: “The continued support of the Development Bank and Wesley Clover as our institutional investors has given us the reassurance and the confidence to invest in our technology and scale-up so that we can take advantage of a rapidly changing global market.
“We’ve seen significant growth of over 800% since our first round of seed funding with 40% of our customer base now outside of the UK.
“With the backing of our equity partners, we’ve got a longer-term opportunity to build a global company that is at the forefront of the emerging video chat category and helps redefine customer contact in the digital age.”
Andy Morris, of the Development Bank of Wales, said: “The Talkative team has developed a robust and proven technical solution that has global reach given the shift from phone to digital centric customer solutions and the particularly rapid growth of video chat in the contact centre industry.
“As early investors in Talkative with pre-seed capital and follow-on funding, we are delighted to have supported the growth of this innovative business over the last four years.
“This is a really exciting market with an opportunity to scale at pace given no established incumbent provider. Indeed, as an alumni of the Alacrity Foundation they’ve already
gained real traction with a highprofile customer base and the creation of highly-skilled jobs.”
Simon Gibson, chief executive of Wesley Clover, said: “As investors we are excited about the international growth prospects for Talkative.
“The company is providing global brands with advanced online customer interactions.
“Armed with their new investment round, we look forward to helping Talkative realise their full potential in both the north and south American markets.”
DELIO
One of Wales’ leading fintech firms, Delio has raised £6.1 million in equity to support its growth plans and create new jobs.
Its latest funding has come from Octopus Ventures, while Maven Capital Partners, which led Delio’s series A round in 2019, is also re-investing in the company.
The funding, which will also support Delio’s international growth, brings the total equity raised to date to more than £11 million.
Through its tech platforms, Delio, founded by David Newman and Gareth Lewis in 2016, enables leading banks, wealth managers and other financial institutions to connect investors with alternative assets such as private equity, private debt and real estate.
Clients include Barclays, UBS and in Wales corporate advisory firm GS Verde Group, Global Welsh and Angels Invest Wales.
It provides around £20 billion of investment opportunities.
Delio currently employs just under 70, but this will increase to more than 100 on the back of its latest funding.
The Cardiff-based venture is one of a number of firms driving the fintech sector in South Wales, a cluster that has been recognised by both the UK and Welsh governments as having significant growth potential.
Co-founder and chief executive Mr Lewis said: “We’re proud to be part of the Welsh fintech growth story. Just a few years ago, Delio had only a handful of staff and a small client base.
“However, since then we have grown the business in a rapid and sustainable way and now work with institutions across Europe, North America and Asia.
“This investment will allow us to capitalise on this momentum, partner with more global financial institutions and develop our technology in new and exciting ways.”
He added: “As the Delio story evolves, we firmly believe that the next evolution of private markets will see the need to connect capital raisers, financial institutions and investors on a global institution-byinstitution basis.
“Thanks to the hard work from everyone in the team, Delio is perfectly positioned to act as the ‘digital plumbing’ for this shift, which will empower financial professionals to collaborate and share investment opportunities across each other’s networks like never before.”
Delio has not disclosed what equity stake its founders have following the latest equity round, or the shape of any future exit for its investors such as a flotation.
AGXIO
Aberystwyth-based AI platform venture Agxio, has raised £2.1 million in equity to support its growth plans.
The agritech company closed a pre-series A funding round as it looks to scale the business and expand internationally.
The fund will be used to further grow the team, enter new AI, agritech and life sciences markets, and continue developing the platform.
Agxio, which has sites in both Aberystwyth and Cambridge, is the Welsh Government’s strategic partner for Agritech Innovation, with the Development Bank of Wales an investor in the firm.
Chief executive and co-founder
Dr Stephen Christie said: “We are very excited about the next phase of growth for the company.
“Our artificial intelligence and machine learning technologies have a broad range of use cases, and we believe that the growth opportunities for us are very significant.”
He added: “We have also created a number of strong partnerships across industry, government and academia to ensure innovation at the highest level.”
Agxio developed a low-code platform that automates the role of the data scientist and machine learning engineer to deploy AI solutions in the agricultural, life sciences and biotech industries.
The platform is an accelerator to build drone analytics, robotics, image analysis and biotechnology.
The technologies are used in arable and livestock farms, closed environment agriculture, parasitology, NHS community care and pathology.