Leeds has gained momentum as an up-and-coming tech hub within the UK industry. As a result, many tech firms have emerged within one of England’s largest cities, fuelling its thriving economy and increasing growth for the digital sector.
Regional development was especially abundant last year, with £29.4 billion brought into the UK tech scene in 2021, 2.3 times as much as 2020’s £11.5 billion. This is its highest period of growth since 2013 to 2014. Leeds shone brightly in that good news as it was ranked number six in the Levelling Up Power Tech League 2021.
With that in mind, here are eight of the up-and-coming Leeds-based tech companies that you’ll want to keep your eyes on.
Answer Pay
Founded in 2020, Answer Pay is a tech company focusing on digitised bill payment and financial services.
The company aims to enable banks, payment service providers, and other financial professionals to process payments digitally with its SPX interoperability platform. The platform provides white-label digital invoice and cash collection services that payment service providers can use with their existing systems via the Request to Pay messaging ecosystem.
The company has raised grant funding from the Department for International Trade in March 2022, though the funding amount is undisclosed. The company plans to use the money to expand its Request to Pay connectivity services to more European countries in the Single Euro Payments Area.
BigChange
BigChange is an IT services and consulting company founded in 2013. It provides field service management software through its job management platform to help companies facilitate business growth.
It currently has a total funding amount of $104.2 million (£79 million), with its most recent funding being in February 2021 from Great Hill Partners for £75 million.
This January, the company adopted location technology through what3words to provide more accuracy for its job location services. BigChange also launched its UK channel partner program and began recruiting channel partners to support its in-house sales activities across the nation.
Hark
Hark’s interconnected cloud-based platform provides sustainable IoT software solutions to help companies reduce waste and manage their sensor data and energy consumption with intelligent assets.
The tech company was founded in 2016 and recently has been taking action to expand further through new staff onboarding opportunities. Clients listed on its website include Sainsbury’s, Asda and Microsoft.
The company recently participated in the MACH Exhibition Showcase with industrial IoT demonstrations and information on energy analytics.
Panintelligence
Panintelligence is a business intelligence solution that supports SaaS organisations with intuitive reporting and predictive analytics. The company provides users with embedded analytical software that displays actionable insights in real-time.
Since the company was founded in 2014, it has been working to improve its product-market fit with its AWS Pi SaaS solution, according to the CEO and Co-Founder Zandra Moore in a recent interview with eWeek UK.
Panintelligence has a current total funding amount of £4.5 million and partnerships with several tech firms, including Firebolt, Panoply, Kleene, Rivery and Snowflake.
RapidSpikeÂ
Founded in 2015, RapidSpike offers a website monitoring and web performance monitoring solution. The company helps websites improve conversions and customer experiences by delivering key data points in management tools, dashboards and alert notifications.
RapidSpike has raised a current total funding amount of £1.5 million, with its latest funding secured in September 2020.
According to its website, the tech firm is monitoring thousands of e-commerce websites across the globe. Names include Tesco, Matalan, Morrisons, Braun and Revlon.
Tappit
Tappit provides digital cashless payment solutions for events and uses data insights to improve safety, sales, profits, customer engagement and customer experience.
The fintech company says users can have complete visibility over their sponsorships, partnerships and fan data with its real-time reporting dashboard. Its tech is targeted at casino resorts, theme parks, sports grounds, hotels, festivals, clubs and music venues, corporate events and colleges.
Tappit was founded in 2017. In recent – and eventful – news, Rose Bowl Stadium in the US chose Tappit’s cashless payments tech.
Tred
Tred is a financial services firm founded in 2019 that helps users fight against climate change and manage their environmental impact with the Tred green debit card. The card applies users’ spending revenue to plant trees and gathers spending data, allowing users to track, reduce and offset their environmental impact. Its website has a waitlist at present.
So far, Tred has raised a total of $1.2 million (£920,000) in funding, most recently getting funds from Grow Cafe Investments in July 2021.
This year, the company has been gaining credibility by gaining ethical and environmental credentials to become a 1% for the Planet member, a pending B Corporation, and a Living Wage employer.
TruNarrative
TruNarrative is part of LexisNexis Risk Solutions, which delivers compliance technology solutions.
Founded in 2016, TruNarrative provides security solutions enabling e-commerce, banking, lending and payments organisations to onboard customers and identify fraud and risk through machine learning and process automation software.
The tech company has raised a total of $8 million (£6 million) in funding thus far. In February it was chosen by challenger GB Bank to provide its customer onboarding and transactional risk compliance capabilities. Other TruNarrative customers include Atom Bank in the UK and Ikano Bank in Sweden.
Check out the previous features on tech firms in Newcastle and North East England.
