Kandji, OTA Insight, Simply Mystro and Brainnwave Bag Funding

Healthy action for an Apple device management and security solution, a cloud-based hospitality business intelligence (BI) provider, a risk management company, and an augmented (BI) firm.

Four go forward in London and Edinburgh with Kandji, OTA Insight, Simply Mystro and Brainnwave getting tech funding. 

Kandji, an Apple device management and security solution, has raised $100 million (£74.4 million) in Series C funding. It will use the funds for product development, global hiring and to open a London office.

OTA Insight, a London-based cloud-based hospitality business intelligence (BI) provider, has raised $80 million (£59.5 million) from Spectrum Equity.

Risk management company Simply Mystro has secured £30 million in seed funding after opening five months ago – “the largest and fastest growth in UK history”.

While in Edinburgh, augmented BI firm Brainnwave has announced a Series A investment worth CA$10.2 million (£6 million) with Hatch, an engineering, project management and professional services company.

London Calling for Kandji 

Kandji is headquartered in San Diego and says it has had a nearly 10x increase in valuation since the company’s Series A funding round one year ago.

This latest round was led by Tiger Global with participation from Definition, Frontline Ventures, and existing investors First Round Capital, Greycroft, Felicis Ventures, the Spruce House Partnership, B Capital Group, SVB Capital and Okta Ventures.

The financing, the company’s third funding round since last year, brings Kandji’s total funding raised to $188.5 million (£140 million).

“It is vital that enterprises effectively manage and protect their employees’ devices within our ‘work from anywhere’ reality,” explains Adam Pettit, CEO and Co-Founder, Kandji.

He adds: “We are also seeing IT and security merge – 53% of CISOs now have IT responsibilities, an increase of 39% from 2019.”

The new London office is part of its European expansion plans. During the next year, the company plans to hire an additional 50 local team members and invest at least $100 million (£74.4 million) over the next five years. The new London-based team will “provide regional support to existing customers and partners across Europe”. Also, customers in the EU region will be able to use Kandji’s new European data centre in Frankfurt.

Kandji’s customers include Allbirds, Attentive, Amplitude, Belkin, Lacework, Monzo, Noom, Rackspace, Remitly, Segment and Whoop.

Insight into OTA Insight 

OTA Insight has offices in London, Ghent (Belgium), Denver, Dallas, Sydney and Singapore.

In this funding round, Spectrum Equity joins existing OTA Insight investors Eight Roads, F-Prime Capital and Highgate Technology Ventures.

OTA Insight provides data and analytics for commercial decision making across the hospitality industry. Over 55,000 hotel properties in 185 countries use OTA Insight’s commercial platform, which includes Market Insight, Rate Insight, Revenue Insight and Parity Insight.

“Prior to the pandemic, the hospitality industry had been open to gradually adopting new technology. Our business experienced significant growth through 2020 despite the industry headwinds, but 2021 has been a breakthrough year for us as the recovery accelerated the pace of technology adoption. We anticipate unprecedented opportunities and growth as the recovery continues,” says OTA Insight’s CEO, Sean Fitzpatrick.

The investment will be used for product development, engineering, sales and expansion – the latter is “particularly in the Americas”.

Simply Mystro and SAP

Simply Mystro, is a UK-based startup built on SAP Business Technology Platform (BTP). It has offices in London, Milan, Sharjah (UAE) and Cape Town.

The company provides a validation network for banking institutions’ processing and risk management. Its proprietary rules-based processing engine is integrated with SAP technology, and delivers an auto-validation process between buyers, suppliers and funders.

Sheikh Faisal Bin Khalid Bin Mohammed Al Qassemi, member of the Sharjah ruling family, joined Simply Mystro as a Principle investor and Chairman this month. Simply Mystro now has its eyes set on global financial institutions, following deals with four major banks and a government regulator.

Russell Carter, CEO and Founder at Simply Mystro, says the firm is now valued at £200 million.

Through SAP BTP’s Integration Suite, Simply Mystro can integrate its on-premise and cloud-based applications and processes with tools and prebuilt content managed by SAP.

Using a combination of artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning (ML), robotic process automation and blockchain, Simply Mystro compares all data sets as per AML (anti-money laundering) global compliance standards, and is verified against PEP (politically exposed persons), sanction and adverse media databases.

Brainnwave Hatch-es Clever Plan

Following September’s news that Scottish firm Brainnwave was on a multi-million-pound scale-up programme, it has now picked up funding and made a co-venture with Hatch.

The two organisations will focus on developing applications and products combining Brainnwave’s ML and AI-powered analytics platform with Hatch’s knowledge of the metals and mining, energy and infrastructure sectors.

The Series A funding will allow Brainnwave’s headcount to grow by 100 people, while in parallel “upscaling” the firm’s Edinburgh and London locations.

Brainnwave’s augmented BI solution is used by organisations such as William Grant & Sons, Aggreko and Metropolitan Thames Valley. It combines data exploration and visualisation for decision-making capabilities.

Steve Coates, CEO and Co-Founder of Brainnwave, explains: “This co-venture was the ideal opportunity to combine Brainnwave’s unique tech stack and expertise with the deep industry relationships and sector expertise of Hatch to build things together, tackling some of today’s most important issues.”

With COP26 – and profits – on their minds, the co-venture will initially focus on creating solutions to target climate change and urbanisation.

Antony Peyton
Antony Peyton
Antony Peyton is the Editor of eWeek UK. He has 18 years' journalism and writing experience. His career has taken him to China, Japan and the UK - covering tech, fintech and business. Follow on Twitter @TonyFintech.
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