There’s plenty of action across the UK with Forensic Analytics, Sust Global and Toca securing tech funding.
‘Ello, ‘ello. Hertfordshire-based Forensic Analytics, a digital forensics company whose communications analysis software is used by police forces, has secured a £4.5 million investment from Mercia Asset Management.
London-based climate data startup Sust Global announced a $3.2 million (£2.3 million) seed round led by Hambro Perks, with investment from Vala Capital, Powerhouse Ventures, Thirdstream Partners, and angel investors from UK and US financial firms.
Toca, a Reading-based provider of no code apps and automation fabric, revealed £2 million of funding from private investors – an extension to the £1.4 million raised since 2018.
Forensic Analytics in Good Order
Lawful good firm Forensic Analytics says the funding, which comes from Mercia’s own balance sheet and the Northern VCT Funds managed by Mercia, will allow it to further invest into its cloud-based software platform and expand its sales internationally.
Its software solutions include Cell Site Analysis Suite (CSAS), which allows users to analyse data sets, and create reports to an “evidential standard at speed”.
In a recent speech, Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick told how over an 18-month period, its CSAS tool had enabled the Met to close 533 county lines, which resulted in more than 1,000 individuals being arrested, 1,624 charges brought and a 99% conviction rate achieved, including many long custodial sentences.
Founded in 2013 by Joe Hoy, Martin Griffiths and Andrew Hausler, Forensic Analytics is based in Letchworth. The company was also recognised this year with a Queen’s Award for Enterprise.
Sust Global Gets Sustenance
Sust Global will use this funding to grow the size of its commercial and technical teams and to expand its climate product into new markets such as real estate and banking.
The firm uses a “geospatial first” approach – and offers physical climate risk and emissions insights. Customers, including data providers, investors and corporates, can access insights via a cloud-native analytics product.
Sust Global’s product integrates historic and near real-time data from satellites and ground based sensors, coupled with forward-looking global climate models, using spatial statistics and deep learning techniques.
Funded by the European Space Agency, Sust Global’s research has been recently featured in the Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) and the American Geophysical Union (AGU) conferences.
Josh Gilbert, Sust Global CEO, states: “At the UN’s COP26 summit, world leaders, CEOs and celebrities will announce promises to address the climate crisis. But how hollow are these promises? Corporates, investors and governments are accused of greenwashing and will likely fall short of their commitments. A large part of this is due to a lack of accurate, validated and transparent data.”
Toca Rule-s
Toca offers a single no code platform that “works across any infrastructure and system”.
Mat Rule, Founder and CEO of Toca, says: “Toca enables businesses to breathe and innovate. We’ve built the Toca apps and automation fabric to bridge legacy and cloud-native environments and address the integration problems that have plagued IT for decades. We are democratising application building so businesses can automate enterprise wide. This will help organisations shift from using technology to solve just 5% of business problems, to finally address the remaining 95%.”
The company reckons the RPA and emerging no code application development markets are predicted to have a combined value of $20 billion (£14.5 billion) by 2027.
Toca was founded in 2018 and got more than 257% growth in FY21. The company has clients in healthcare, legal, utilities, not-for-profit, retail and tech industries.
