Funding

The DataLab

The DataLab has secured £13.5 million in funding from the Scottish Government following a successful first phase of activity.  It has created and led a number of education programmes and events, as well as providing support for Scottish innovation projects.

This funding will allow it to improve data innovation’s economic impact on Scotland, help to generate more jobs and build on its growing global reputation. To date, The Data Lab has provided approximately £2.4m to 66 projects, with the projects’ total value reaching £6.3m.

Richard Lochhead, Minister for Further Education, Higher Education and Science, who announced the funding, said: “This investment builds on the £100m already invested in Scotland’s eight innovation centres, including The Data Lab, which is having a transformative effect on our economy.”

“Scottish universities excel in data science. Together with the country’s rich data resources and advanced infrastructure, this provides the ideal environment for the Data Lab to thrive, benefiting industry, the third sector and public services.”

Prodsight

Edinburgh start-up Prodsight, an intelligence Software-as-a-Service company, has secured £115,000 in seed funding from prominent Scottish angel investors in its first round of fundraising.

Prodsight plans to use the newly secured cash injection to refine its product and expand its team. The company says it expects to hire key staff over the next 12 months to improve its product and grow its customer base.

Investors in this first round include a number of prominent Scottish angel investors such as Alistair Forbes, Rob Dobson, Judy Wilson and Andrew Barrie. More than half of the SeedHaus tech incubator partners have invested in the company, including Robin Knox and Paul Walton formerly of Intelligent Point of Sale.

Company founder Tadas Labudis said: “This funding is huge for us. It will allow us to build the team and move us on far more quickly than we could have otherwise. The customer feedback analysis space is still a relatively young market but it is growing and the opportunities are huge – there are currently some 1.5m companies across the world using live chat functionality and generating billions of customer conversations.”

Knox said of the company: “Prodsight is exciting as an investment for me. I can clearly see how executives easily reconnect with the customer and product teams can have actionable insight to work with, without having to spend days trawling through reams of live chat logs.”

Orca Money

Orca Money has reached a significant fund raising milestone by hitting its crowdfunding target. Jordon Stodart, Co-Founder of Orca, commented to DIGIT: “We are delighted to have breached our target raise of £500,000 on the Seedrs equity crowdfunding platform. We are still open for investment, currently at £543,000 funded from more than 380 investors. The campaign will close in a couple of weeks, if people are interested in investing.

“The funds raised will support a number of strategic objectives, including enhancing our investment product. Currently, Orca customers invest in a portfolio curated by Orca. Our plan is to enhance the product, giving investors greater control over the composition of the portfolio.

“We’ll also integrate with a number of new lenders to improve choice and increase diversification – at present, we have 11 lenders in the pipeline. We’re continually looking at ways to add value for our customers, and this fundraise will play an important part in us realising our ambitious plans.”

Contracts

Smarter Grid Solutions

DERMS software provider, Smarter Grid Solutions (SGS), has agreed a new enterprise licence deal with Western Power Distribution (WPD), the UK’s largest electricity distribution utility company by area. This deal will enable WPD to deploy SGS’s ANM Strata software across its entire network areas in South Wales, the South West and the East and West Midlands.

Brent Marshall, Chief Operating Officer of SGS, said “This new agreement marks a major change in how utilities are deploying our software as they roll-out our products to meet their customers’ demands. The licence provides WPD with a platform to also meet emerging and future system needs, including management of battery storage and electric vehicle charging.”

Partnerships

CityFibre

Telecommunications giant CityFibre has formed a strategic partnership with Calix. This union will see the world’s only Software Defined Access operating system deployed across all CityFibre’s networks, which the company says will unleash its UK city networks’ full power and potential.

The implementation of Calix’s AXOS platform will make CityFibre the UK’s only advanced-intelligence, wholesale infrastructure company, capable of delivering ten gigabits per second (Gbps) connections, with further potential for speeds of up to 100 Gbps. After its roll-out, CityFibre will operate an open-access, Software Defined Networking (SDN) ecosystem, with the ability to support partners’ end-to-end SDN implementation.

Greg Mesch, chief executive of CityFibre, said: “In Calix, we have found a like-minded ally, an innovator that is pushing the boundaries of what is possible when intelligent software meets fibre-only infrastructure. Our partnership enables us to unleash the full power and potential of our fibre networks, creating the nation’s fastest, smartest and most accessible, digital communications platform.

“The ability to scale services up to 100 Gbps, while driving customer experience to new levels, highlights the inadequacies of connections that are passed off as fibre today. It also shows that not all full fibre networks are equal and that, as an alternative network builder, CityFibre’s commitment to the UK’s digital future goes far beyond simply putting fibre in the ground.”

Michael Weening, Calix executive VP of Field Operations, said: “The Calix and CityFibre visions of a software defined access future are perfectly aligned. CityFibre built its network from the beginning to take advantage of all that a fibre infrastructure can enable, while we built AXOS with the intelligence to take that foundation to the next level.

“With AXOS, CityFibre can more rapidly deliver new products, services and features to the market, further distancing itself from legacy competitive offerings that fail to enable true market differentiation. As we continue to innovate on the AXOS platform, the continued speed, agility and efficiencies we enable will allow CityFibre and its partners to change the UK’s broadband market forever.”

FinTech Scotland 

Industry body FinTech Scotland has teamed up with insurance and financial services giant, Prudential UK. The purpose of the partnership is to drive the continued digitisation of Scotland’s financial services. According to Prudential this strategic alignment reflects its ongoing commitment to playing a lead role in the digitalisation of financial services in Scotland.

David Macmillan, Prudential UK’s MD of Wealth Solutions, said: “In a short-period of time, FinTech Scotland has assembled an impressive range of strategic partners which we’re delighted to be joining.

“Innovation through collaboration is the key to firmly establishing Scotland’s long-term fintech credentials and FinTech Scotland is uniquely positioned to help make this happen. The quality of the fintech community in Edinburgh convinced us to locate our new facility in the city and since doing so in May we’ve not been disappointed.

“We look forward to actively developing the already solid reputation of the community and relish the opportunity to work alongside our universities, government agencies and the other partners to foster entrepreneurial talent across the sector.”

FinTech Scotland chief executive, Stephen Ingledew, said: “I am hugely impressed with Prudential UK’s ambitious plans and leadership in transforming financial services. Their appointment very much complements the other recently announced strategic partnerships and ensures we are reflecting the fintech opportunities across all aspects of financial services in Scotland and globally.”

PwC

PwC has teamed up with Edinburgh-based tech company Bemo to launch a free mobile app, My Returns Reminder, which helps SMEs keep track of payment deadlines. The app came as a result of Bemo’s participation in PwC’s SCALE programme, which is run in conjunction with tech incubator Codebase. The launch forms a key part of PwC’s expansion into the provision of digital services for private businesses.

Douglas Shand, Head of Innovation and Technology at PwC in Scotland, said: “The launch of My Returns Reminder is a significant moment for our SCALE programme as it embodies what we are trying to achieve by illustrating how innovation works in modern business.

“When PwC realised there was demand for such an app, Bemo was the obvious choice for collaboration. If we hold our SCALE partners up as exemplars then we should be ready to step up ourselves to collaborate with them, and that is what we’ve done here.

“Since PwC launched its partnership with Codebase in March 2017, we have continually been blown away by the talent of its tenants. Bemo is just one of a number of Scottish firm who are demonstrating the potential of the tech scene in Scotland, and how the talent exists to make the country a true global leader. We can’t wait to see what the company does next.”

Ian Marshall, Senior Finance Partner at PwC in Scotland, added: “My Returns Reminder has the potential to help thousands of businesses across the UK. The app is an example of the innovative type of support provided by our Digital Private Business service, which is providing solutions for all manner of start-up and scale-up companies.

“And in the example of My Returns Reminder, not only are we providing a service for companies with a taxable profit of less than £1.5 million, but we’re also utilising the expertise of a start-up business, which has an impressive track record of developing software solutions for business.”

The University of Edinburgh

The University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt University have signed a City Region Deal, which will see the pair work together to tackle the digital skills gap. The £661m Data-Driven Innovation initiative is a key part of this deal.

It aims to train 100,000 people in data skills over the next decade, from computer science specialists to traditional jobs that will increasingly use data. They will do this by increasing the provision of data science teaching for their students, and support schools and colleges across the region to provide digital skills teaching and training.

Secretary of State for Scotland, David Mundell, said: “This exciting project – backed by £270m of UK Government investment – will ensure that the UK leads the world in technologies of the future and benefits from the economic growth opportunities this brings.

“By giving 100,000 people, and 1,000 companies, the skills and capability they need to drive innovation through big data and artificial intelligence, this partnership working will help maximise the potential of these sectors – a key goal of the UK Government’s Modern Industrial Strategy.”

Professor Richard A Williams, Principal and Vice-Chancellor of Heriot-Watt University, said: “By working in partnership we can ensure our city community can prosper and achieve its obvious potential as the leading international research hub for digital innovation. Our frontier research and educational skills in digital technology and its application in artificial intelligence and robotics are already shaping and driving the future and taking Scottish innovation to the world.”