Female-led Microsoft Cloud specialist, Akari, has enjoyed outstanding growth since its launch five months ago and has so far transformed from an idea into a 20-strong team.

Set to continue its development, the company hopes to take on another 20 employees by the end of the year. Explaining the firm’s rapid expansion, Akari managing director Margaret Totten says: “It was a real blink and you’ll miss it scenario. We had an idea and then suddenly we had an office in the centre of Glasgow, employees and apprentices.”

The company has also just announced the appointment of Scottish business veterans and serial entrepreneurs, Keith Inch, as its new chairman and Rod Stuart as director of strategy. Inch and Stuart have been brought on to specifically help the company manage and support its upward trajectory.

Akari helps guide organisations through the daunting process of digital transformation (DT). Co-founded by Margaret Totten, Kimerbley Totten and Lindsay Climson, the company launched in April 2019, became an official Microsoft partner and is now one of the few tech companies that can boast a 50/50 gender ratio split and is fully female-led.

So far, the firm has received plenty of help from Skills Development Scotland and Business Gateway, Totten explains.

“The support system for startups in Scotland has really matured over the past decade,” she says. “Scotland’s ecosystem is a welcoming one – nobody has pushed us to the back of the queue because we’re too small. The tech community is very active and we’ve had great interactions and forged new connections by attending industry events such as DIGIT’s.”

The company’s philosophy is that digital transformation is more than just the licensing of new software and adding in more evergreen tools. It offers digital inclusion, change management, and has its own unique IP in the form of its Akari Virtual Assistant (AVA) and Translation Studio. Both of these applications work to improve productivity, collaboration and digital inclusion.

Akari is novel in its approach, according to Totten, because it treats this process as a holistic one. “Simply deploying the technology is not enough,” she says, because it does not address what happens after it has been installed.

Digital Inclusion Needs to be a Priority 

Akari was formed to provide a solution to this problem by offering an end to end solution to manage the “cultural change” and to “project manage” the entire process. One of the key goals of the company, aside from ensuring organisations get a return on their DT investment, is to make technology more accessible for everyone – especially those with disabilities.

“By focusing on digital inclusion, people with impairments, such as dyslexia, can walk into an organisation and the technology is already accessible to them,” Totten notes. “I believe there are no limits to what we can achieve when we empower every individual. Tech should level the playing field for anyone anywhere to use it regardless of their disability.”

“Digital transformation is a massive change and investment for any organisation, going from an on-premises environment to a cloud one is huge. It is no longer just about the tech but also how people work with it,” she adds.

Another factor that sets the firm apart is its willingness to embrace collaboration with other companies, Totten explains. “There are certain packages we do not do, such as SharePoint, so when we encounter something like this we will reach out to work with partners, by bringing them in we can offer an end to end solution.

“I don’t want to be in a race to the bottom or to cut the neck of another business out of competitiveness and then not be able to deliver to our customers properly. I’d rather be collaborative and make sure the work gets done to a high standard. I don’t know if it is a female perspective but I don’t see other partners as competition. There is enough business to go around and it is better to work together to provide excellent outcomes.”

Diversity Brings Unique Perspectives 

On being a female-led tech firm, Totten says it came about organically and emphasises that Akari is about equality, diversity and talent but is also keen to empower other women. The company has recently hired two male members of staff, who she believes bring a lot to the table.

“Our hiring ethos is that we will always take the best candidate,” she notes. “We won’t hire based on gender alone. That’s not the route I want to go down.

“Onboarding more men to the team has only been a good thing for us. Keith and Rod have brought yet another unique perspective to the table. Keith is quite pragmatic and not led by his emotions as I am. Both bring a solid balance to what we are doing and they help up to make decisions that have strong strategic outputs. Diversity within a team is what is key to success.”

But having a fully female board does come with its challenges, she admits. “Myself, Kimberly and Lindsay are three strong women who have worked together for years and we definitely have clashes,” she explains.

“We’re all equal partners of the business and all have strong opinions on what should happen. But we get around any issue that arises by having a very open dialogue and we all understand we bring something unique to the business. We have consciously cultivated an open environment in our business where people can have their say.”

Looking to the future, Totten says she hopes that by the middle of next year the company will have a team of 60 and be building on its apprenticeship scheme, an upskilling programme for Scottish youths delivered in partnership with QA Scotland.

“We took on apprentices early on, which many mistakenly think is easy labour but it’s not. Apprentices merit the time and effort it takes to train them and you owe it to them to do it well – they have put their faith in you. We’d like to take on more as the company progresses.”

Having taken on a number of large Scottish contracts, including Renfrewshire Council and McCurrach, the company now plans to focus firmly on pursuing growth. The company recently assimilated Cloudtrace, a boutique Scottish SMB with expertise in AI, Security and Microsoft Azure to support this ambition.

Totten says she feels with Inch and Stuart onboard, now is the time for Akari to go from “a smaller player with a big punch” to a “leading partner in the UK around change and accessibility”.