National investment group Mercia Technologies PLC has announced a £1.5million follow-on investment into its direct investment, Voxpopme, to support the further scaling of the business as it is set to double its revenues this year.

Goji, the investment manager and platform focused on Direct Lending, today announced it has reached over £100 million in assets on its platform, aiding Goji's mission to open-up the Direct Lending sector to advice. This milestone coincides with Goji becoming a partner of SimplyBiz, the largest adviser-support network in the UK.

Direct Lending is the world’s fastest-growing asset class, yet little of that is advised – it is mostly institutional money or direct investors using one of the large P2P lending platforms. Advisers have been cautious of the asset class, perceived as relatively new and untested, but in light of recent HMRC figures in September 2018, as well as the growing assets on the Goji platform, the tide appears to be turning.

Siilo, the secure instant messaging app for healthcare professionals, has raised a €4.5 million funding round. Lead investor in the round is the EQT Ventures fund with participation from existing investors. The funding will be used to scale-up Siilo’s user base across Europe, with a particular focus on the UK and Germany.

Medical professionals are faced with an increasingly fragmented healthcare system and outdated methods of communication, such as fax, pagers and landlines. This often results in key patient data being siloed and valuable time being wasted trying to get access to the right information. To ensure the right teams have access to vital patient data at the right time, healthcare professionals have taken matters into their own hands. According to British Medical Journal research, 98.9% of UK hospital clinicians now have smartphones, with about a third using consumer messaging apps in the clinical workplace.

LIGNIA Wood Company, a producer of sustainable modified wood based in Barry, Wales, has secured £3 million funding from London-based investment manager Downing LLP, to support the construction of its first commercial production facility.

The company is helping tackle issues relating to lack of supply of legal and sustainable hardwoods. It is doing this by modifying the properties of sustainably-sourced, plantation-grown softwoods under the brand name LIGNIA®.

Phytoponics, a multi-award winning start-up specialising in the development of hydroponic deep-water culture technology for sustainable agriculture has secured £300,000 in new funding following on from the £200,000 it raised earlier this year. The funding comes from existing investors and a number of new angel investors lead by Smart Anchor Capital.

The company based in Aberystwyth was co-founded by Adam Dixon and Luke Parkin during Adam’s studies at Cardiff University with the aim of delivering highly optimised hydroponic systems designed to produce better crop yields than traditional systems and with the potential to meet global food demand with sustainability in mind. Phytoponic’s patented Hydrosac technology is ready for high volume commercial growing having proven itself by producing two tonnes of high quality tomatoes through a pilot project housed at the company’s glasshouse facility at Aberystwyth University.

In partnership with The Invested Investor, AngelNews is publishing this recent interview with Simon King, a Principal at Octopus Ventures.

Foresight Group has announced a £500,000 equity investment into Mobile Pay Systems, trading as Swoopos, through the Midlands Engine Investment Fund (MEIF).

Swoopos provides a Mobile Point of Sale (“MPOS”) universal payments system that combines ePOS and cloud-based technology to deliver rich data analysis for businesses operating in the hospitality, and, soon the retail sector. The system includes a mobile wallet, booking system and mobile ordering, as well as a management reporting suite to help the retailer capture and monitor customer data.

BVA BDRC has published its quarterly SME Finance Monitor. The largest and most frequent study of its kind in the UK, research have been gathered across 29 waves of interviews since 2011 and are based on more than 140,000 interviews with SMEs.

The data to year ending Q2 2018 data published today provides further updates as negotiations over Brexit continue. The survey has been expanded to provide information on a wider range of financial products, not just loans and overdrafts, but current demand for finance (from any source) remains limited. SMEs expressed a degree of caution due to the future feeling uncertain, and three in ten said their need for finance was reduced by using trade credit and/or holding £10,000 or more in credit balances.

Smart cities technology firm Connexin has become an official partner of the Northern Powerhouse Partnership Programme.

Calling women across the Northern Powerhouse to be part of the Women Angels of the North Investment Forum on 12^th November. Organised by UK Business Angels Association in partnership with NorthInvest and Growth Capital Ventures, this important event, held in the elegant Art Deco surroundings of the Queen’s Hotel in central Leeds, seeks to raise awareness among experienced women from business and the professions about the opportunities to back great entrepreneurs across the Northern regions.

Capify, an alternative SME finance provider that has helped almost 10,000 UK SMEs to grow and to thrive is eyeing a £125 million+ funding target over the next few years, as it celebrates 10 years in business.

Set up during the height of the credit crunch in 2008, Capify, based in Greater Manchester, has defied the odds to help almost 10,000 SMEs and retailers to raise funding, delivering much needed access to working capital in the form of merchant cash advances and alternative business loans to benefit the UK economy.

Paragraf, the graphene technology development company, has rapidly followed its seed investment of £2.9m, announced in May 2018, with the opening of a groundbreaking, new facility north of Cambridge, UK. The site represents a turning point for graphene-based technologies, enabling Paragraf to drive large-scale development of mass-market, graphene-based electronic devices. 

Paragraf’s proprietary production technique overcomes the quality, contamination and reproducibility barriers faced by other graphene production methods. The customised equipment at the Cambridge facility will allow Paragraf to convert its cutting edge laboratory research into novel products, including next generation sensors, solid state electronics and energy storage cells.