InMotion Ventures, Jaguar Land Rover’s venture capital fund, has announced its investment in Urgent.ly, the connected roadside assistance service supported by a cutting edge technology platform.

The Dream Corporation has secured $1.1 million of investment to introduce a new leisure and hospitality concept with immersive entertainment at its heart.

The investment is led by Imbiba, a specialist investor in the UK leisure and hospitality sector via the Imbiba Leisure EIS Fund, and is supported by tech angel investors, with growth plans across major UK cities.

The funding will enable the team, led by alumni from McKinsey, Oval Space and Milk & Honey, to build exclusive virtual reality experiences. The first of these is to be installed in OTHERWORLD, a permanent site scheduled for opening in Haggerston, East London, mid-2019.

EIS & VCT specialist Calculus Capital has invested £2.5m in fintech company Essentia Analytics (see photo), a leading provider of behavioural data analytics and consulting for professional investors. The investment by Calculus will be used to further develop Essentia’s services as it scales its client base of investment management institutions around the world. 

Foresight Group has made a £1.25 million growth capital investment into Fertility Focus Limited, a leading fertility monitoring technology company that has developed OvuSense, a registered medical device that enables women to predict ovulation.  The investment was led by Foresight on behalf of Foresight VCT plc and Foresight 4 VCT plc as part of a larger £2 million funding round, supported by new and existing investors including private High Net-Worth Individuals.

Par Equity, the venture capital firm, has closed five investments worth £4.85m in just two days. The firm was lead investor and partnered with the Scottish Investment Bank on all five deals.

Aberdeen-headquartered SPEX Group Holdings Limited has secured a multi-million pound follow-on investment from its management team and BGF, the UK’s most active investor in growing businesses, to accelerate growth. BGF originally invested £5m in February 2014 to support the company’s expansion in international markets.

SPEX Group’s subsidiaries provide specialist explosive products and services to the oil and gas industry, including for downhole cutting, punching and abandonment.

Growth Intelligence has announced the successful close of a £1.7m investment round. The company received multiple offers with the round being led by 24Haymarket. Existing investors including MMC Ventures also participated.

NVM Private Equity has exited from Warwickshire-based Lanner Group, a leading provider of predictive simulation software for blue chip organisations worldwide. The business has been sold to independent international engineering, consulting and technology consultancy Royal HaskoningDHV and represents NVM’s fifth exit from its portfolio in the past six months.

NVM invested £3 million in the management buy-out of Lanner in March 2010 and has pro-actively supported the business throughout its ownership, helping the management team to grow and develop the company.

Israeli startup Hailo, developers of a proprietary processing architecture for deep learning on edge devices, has expanded its Series A funding round to $21 million.

Startup Funding Club (SFC) has recently closed an investment into state-of-the-art eBike company Swytch Technology in an SFC-lead round of £800,000 coming from various entities as well as private investors. The funded company produces and sells eBike kits that convert existing bikes into electric power-assisted ones.

MEIF Maven Debt Finance has provided Validair Monitoring Solutions Limited, a technical services and environmental monitoring solutions company, with a £160,000 debt funding package. The funding will enable the business to expand its service offering overseas, invest in its product portfolio to meet growing market demand and support the appointment of four employees in the region.

BGF has completed a further investment into The Prezola Group to deploy new technology platforms and prepare for targeted international expansion.