Adventoris, a Huddersfield company which has developed an innovative mobile app platform, Swiftcloud, has secured a £500,000 funding round which includes investment from the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund, supported by the European Regional Development Fund.
NPIF – Mercia Equity Finance, a product fund managed by Mercia Fund Managers, has provided half of the funding, with the remainder coming from the Angel CoFund and private investors.
SwiftCloud offers small and medium-sized firms the same type of benefits as more expensive sales systems often used by large corporates. Companies can receive and process sales orders directly from their B2B customers via the app and web ordering on a single platform and then send promotions and special offers directly to their customer base. The product integrates directly with a wide range of enterprise software systems and enables sales teams to use the software whilst on site with their customers.
SwiftCloud is already in use by companies in a variety of sectors and with combined turnover of over £1.0billion. The funding will enable Adventoris to scale up its operations as it seeks to grow its salesforce significantly over the next 12 months.
Adventoris was set up in 2012 by CEO James Clarkson and Aman Shergill who is the company’s CTO.
Ashwin Kumaraswamy, Investment Director at Mercia Fund Managers, which manages NPIF – Mercia Equity Finance, said:
“SwiftCloud is a very impressive software application for the SME market. Transactional volumes are growing at a rate of 20% a month and software vendors are also collaborating with Adventoris and selling SwiftCloud as the mobile element of their own software proposition. This funding will help Adventoris to scale up its operation and deliver rapid growth.”
Ken Cooper, Managing Director at British Business Bank, said:
“The Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund has been very active in the Yorkshire region, and has provided vital funding to a growing number of ambitious, high-growth businesses. We are keen to keep up the pace as our fund managers target further investments in the area.”
Tim Mills, Investment Director at the Angel CoFund, said:
“We first backed James and Aman in 2012 when they began to put together the SwiftCloud platform, with a clear vision for a solid and smart solution, so it is great to be able to continue to back them again as they drive the growth of the business. In building SwiftCloud the Adventoris team have solved a very real problem for many busineses, a solution that can help them drive top line growth as well improving the experience for their customers ”
Jon Kenworthy of DLA Piper provided legal advice to Adventoris while Caroline Walker of CMS advised Enterprise Ventures and Peter Francis of Geldards advised the Angel CoFund on the deal.
The Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund project is supported financially by the European Union using funding from the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as part of the European Structural and Investment Funds Growth Programme 2014-2020 and the European Investment Bank.