Hammerkit, a Finnish cloud technology provider which has opened an office at Liverpool Science Park to target the global PR market, has received backing from the North West Fund as part of a €1.25m (£1.05m) investment round.
The company, which provides repeatable, digital solutions for the PR and marketing industry, will use the funding to establish its Cloudstore business in the UK. It plans to create 12 new jobs in Liverpool in the next year and a further 40-50 positions in the city within three to four years.
The North West Fund for Venture Capital, managed by EV, and the North West Fund for Digital & Creative, managed by AXM, have between them invested £435,000, with an equal amount coming from Veraventure, a Helsinki-based institutional investor. The company has also received further support from Tekes, the Finnish funding agency for technology and innovation.
Hammerkit was established five years ago in Helsinki by a team of IT professionals. Its cloud-based web development toolkit and Cloudstore make it faster and easier to build professional-grade websites and social media applications. A key feature is that any site can be launched as a repeatable solution, effectively turning one-off web projects into potential best-selling digital products. Cloudstore has been piloted with the global PR agencies Edelman in Latin America and Hill+Knowlton Strategies in Europe.
“The digital industry is crying out for more effective ways to produce the services that clients need. We developed the Cloudstore to meet that need and ensure that large agencies can leverage their scale to produce digital services effectively. We also want to help them join up their creative talent to ensure the best, most repeatable solutions are shared across their company to increase revenue and profit margins. We’re excited to launch the next phase of Hammerkit and the creation of a new digital industry hub in Liverpool, given its abundance of digital talent and proximity to MediaCityUK. There is real passion here to succeed,” said Mark Sorsa-Leslie, CEO of Hammerkit.
Will Clark, Investment Director of EV, said: “Hammerkit has identified a niche in the PR and marketing industry with major growth potential. With the rapid rise in social and digital media, PR agencies want the ability to create new sites for specific promotional campaigns quickly and easily using non-specialist staff. Hammerkit provides repeatable, off-the-shelf solutions that allow agencies to create new revenue streams and improve profits. This investment will allow the company to develop a permanent NW base to service its target client base of global PR agencies, which typically have a large UK presence.”
David Smith of AXM added: “Hammerkit has an award-winning background, and we hope that AXM’s knowledge and sector contacts will prove invaluable as it expands its business model here in the North West of England.”