Investment in Cambridge technology company

12 June 2012

Imperial Innovations Group plc

Innovations leads £1.5m funding round for Cambridge software developer Featurespace

Imperial Innovations Group plc (AIM: IVO, 'Innovations'), a leading technology commercialisation and investment group, has led a £1.5m funding round for Featurespace, a Cambridge-based software solutions provider, alongside existing investors, Nesta, Cambridge Angels and Cambridge Capital Group.

Mike Lynch, non-executive director of Featurespace and founder and ex-CEO of Autonomy, has also invested in this round.

Featurespace, co-founded by Professor Bill Fitzgerald and David Excell, has commercialised innovative technology that processes streams of data and builds predictive models to identify and influence change in customer behaviour, based on their world-leading research carried out at Cambridge University. Featurespace is applying its technology to fraud detection and marketing analytics.

The fraud detection software provides customers with greater accuracy in identifying genuine risks to their business and a significant reduction in the number of false positive alerts, allowing a greater proportion of business to be accepted safely.

The marketing analytics software assesses the behaviour of on-line customers and predicts the likelihood they will churn, enabling marketers to analyse individual customer behaviour in real-time and take appropriate action to reduce churn, as well as increase revenue.

Featurespace's technology has the potential to be adopted widely across the $10bn business intelligence market which is growing at 13.4% p.a. and the fraud detection market worth $270m with a 13.4% growth rate p.a. (Gartner, 2010). It already has a number of large customers, including Betfair, one of the world's largest international online sports betting providers, and IG Group, a world leader in financial derivatives trading.

Featurespace will use the funds raised to further develop its software, build its team and drive sales.

Innovations invested £750,000 in this round. Jon Edington, Director of Technology Ventures at Innovations, will join the board of Featurespace.

Susan Searle, Chief Executive Officer, Imperial Innovations, said:

"This is our second investment in a Cambridge technology company and is an exciting opportunity to back Professor Bill Fitzgerald, a proven expert in this field. The strength of the investment syndicate is a great endorsement of Featurespace's technology and the management team."

David Excell, Chief Executive Officer, Featurespace, said:

"We are already gaining good customer traction with our technology, and this investment enables us to further build our team and sales capability to support our growing business through the next stage of our development."

Enquiries:

Notes to editors

Imperial Innovations - www.imperialinnovations.co.uk 

Innovations creates, builds and invests in pioneering university technologies addressing global problems in healthcare, energy, engineering and the environment. It combines deep understanding of science and technology with commercial acumen and strong investment expertise.

Innovations supports scientist-entrepreneurs in the commercialisation of their ideas by:

·; leading the formation of new companies and providing facilities in the early stages

·; providing significant investment and encouraging co-investment to accelerate the transition from R&D to products

·; providing operational expertise

·; helping to recruit high-calibre industry figures and experienced entrepreneurs as executive management and Board members

Innovations invests in companies based on technologies from or associated with four universities: Imperial College London; and Cambridge University, Oxford University, and UCL supported by its collaborations with Cambridge Enterprise, OSEM and UCL Business. These are the UK's leading research intensive universities, measured by research income.

By raising £140 million in January 2011, Innovations has been able to accelerate the making of, and increase the size of its investments. In the year to 31 July 2011, Innovations invested £35.1 million (2010: £14 million) in 23 ventures, and launched six new companies.

In its current portfolio of 78 companies, Innovations' most advanced assets include Circassia, which develops innovative vaccines for the treatment of a wide range of allergies; and Nexeon, a battery materials and licensing company which develops silicon anodes which extend the life and increase the capacity of lithium-ion batteries.

FeatureSpace- www.featurespace.co.uk

The leading edge of predictive analytics

Back in 2005 when Featurespace was founded, there wasn't the buzz around 'Big Data' that there is today. However, it was already clear that organisations were failing to exploit the inherent value of the huge databases of events, interactions, activity - call it what you will - that were increasingly the result of data-enabled enterprise management.

Featurespace's stated ambition is to help those organisations to gain retrospective and predictive insight from their data - insight that could deliver significant cost savings, efficiency gains, increased revenues and competitive advantage.

Led by award-winning entrepreneur David Excell, the company has a management teamwith extensive experience in enterprise software, and a board comprising some of the leading lights of the UK technology sector.

Located in the heart of the so-called 'Silicon Fen' in Cambridge, UK, Featurespace is gathering customers across Europe, from a broad range of industries, all of whom share a desire to improve their marketing activities and minimise the operational impact of fraud prevention and detection.

Nesta www.nesta.org.uk

Nesta is the UK's innovation foundation. We help people and organisations bring great ideas to life. We do this by providing investments and grants and mobilising research, networks and skills. We are an independent charity and our work is enabled by an endowment from the National Lottery.

Nesta Operating Company is a registered charity in England and Wales with a company number 7706036 and charity number 1144091. Registered as a charity in Scotland number SC042833. Registered office: 1 Plough Place, London, EC4A 1DE