The North West Fund for Digital & Creative, managed by AXM Venture Capital Limited, has made a further £200,000 equity investment into existing portfolio company Autology World Limited as part of a £330,000 equity financing package to support the company’s continuing penetration of the UK education market.
The Fund has now invested £1.9m into a total of nine digital and creative businesses across the North West region.
The North West Fund for Digital & Creative is part of the £185m North West Fund financed by The European Regional Development Fund and The European Investment Bank.
Autology is a unique e-learning application for secondary schools and colleges, combining the power of Autonomy’s world-leading contextual search software with the content of the leading educational publishers, to accelerate and enhance students’ learning. Autology was established in 2007, and is based at the Daresbury Science and Innovation Centre.
Since the Fund’s first round investment in June 2011, Autology has made great progress:
• The product suite has been re-engineered to make it even more student-friendly, and to incorporate much more video content, with the re-launch going live in February 2012;
• The system has been marketed through local authorities to cover entire counties and cities, and Autology is now used in 76 schools;
• Autology Lite is now available for download to every Windows PC in schools throughout the UK, as part of Microsoft’s innovative new desktop Learning Suite;
• The management team has been supplemented by the recruitment of Eric Hobson as CEO, Niels Montanana as CTO, and Keith Edwards as sales director.
The investment will finance the continued development of the Autology software platform and the Company’s ongoing marketing of the product into new regions across the UK.
CEO Eric Hobson, commented: “Our subscriber base is growing rapidly, up from 25,000 in September to close to 100,000 in April. These additional funds give us the means to hit 500,000 by the year end.”
David Smith, Investment Director of AXM Venture Capital, commented: “We have been delighted to see the progress made by the management team using our first round investment. Autology has a fantastic product; real momentum in the education market, and this latest round will help the Company firmly establish itself as the default provider of online educational resources in the UK. ”