Website: www.merciatech.co.uk
Contact email: contact@mercia.co.uk
About Mercia Technologies PLC
Based in the Midlands of England, Mercia is one of the UK’s most active venture capital investors focused on the identification, creation, funding and scaling of innovative businesses with high growth potential from the UK regions. Initial investments are made via Mercia’s managed funds and then selectively scaling the highest potential businesses through its own balance sheet capital.
Mercia has over £500m in assets under management and a portfolio of nearly 400 companies across a number of sectors including Software & the Internet, Digital & Digital Entertainment, Electronics, Materials, Manufacturing & Engineering, and Life Sciences & Biosciences.
Mercia manages a range of equity and debt funds and has the ability to fund companies from the Proof of Concept and Seed stage through to Series A/B. Mercia has a particular focus on investing in high-growth innovative technology companies based in the Midlands, North of England and Scotland.
In addition to capital, Mercia provides its portfolio companies with strategic support, access to well established networks and operational expertise.
Mercia is an active investor in the immersive technology sector having made investments in nDreams, an interactive entertainment developer, Gorilla In The Room, an immersive technology tools company for the market research sector, and Luminous Group, specialists in 3D digital technology in the architecture and construction industries.
Mercia is now actively looking to build upon its portfolio of companies in the immersive technology sector.
Our interest in immersive technologies
An area Mercia is particularly active in is the immersive technology sector, having invested in a number of companies operating across virtual, augmented and mixed reality.
Given that these technologies have broad market applicability across a wide range of sectors, including digital health, digital manufacturing and the creative industries, we view the immersive technology sector as one of the most innovative and valuable sectors to invest in right now.
At Mercia we invest across a wide range of sectors, including Software & the Internet, Digital & Digital Entertainment, Electronics, Materials, Manufacturing & Engineering, and Life Sciences & Biosciences. We view immersive technologies as being relevant across all of these sectors. We are particularly interested in companies that are building innovative, commercially-focused and most importantly scalable applications of augmented, virtual and mixed reality for non-entertainment purposes, such as training and development.
Mercia has made a number of investments into the immersive technology sector, including:
- nDreams, a leading interactive entertainment developer working with first parties including Oculus.
- Gorilla In The Room, an immersive technology tools company for the market research sector.
- Luminous Group, specialists in 3D digital technology in the architecture and construction industries.
- We are actively looking to build upon our portfolio of companies in this sector and we view the Investment Accelerator as a great opportunity to help us do this.
The value we can add to your company beyond capital
As well as capital, Mercia provides portfolio companies with sectoral expertise, general business guidance and operational support.
As well as having invested in a handful of companies in the sector, last year we partnered with the Digital Catapult’s “Augmentor” programme to support early-stage immersive technology companies from across the UK regions. This was a 10-week programme that provided the cohort of companies with access to technical and business mentorship from industry partners, experts and investors, including Mercia. Our investments in and support of the immersive technology sector has allowed us to build a broad understanding of and network within the industry, which we are looking forward to providing to new investee companies that operate in the sector.
From a general operational and support perspective, at Mercia we have a “Platform” team, comprised of full-time in-house legal, corporate finance, research and recruitment resource. As well as supporting Mercia’s investment team, our Platform team actively provides support to our investee companies across these areas when relevant. We also supplement this through our trusted network of both service and product providers. In terms of the latter, Mercia has partnered with a range of cloud service providers, such as Amazon (AWS), IBM, Google Cloud, HubSpot and Zendesk, amongst others. These partnerships allow our investee companies to unlock discounts and access workshops, webinars and office hours hosted by our partners.
By providing equity capital alongside Innovate UK grant funding, we can ensure that the total amount raised (including both our and Innovate UK’s commitment to the round) is deployed in the most efficient and appropriate manner. Our investment team has considerable board-level experience supporting seed, early- and later-stage companies. We understand how to support these companies, introduce the appropriate level of corporate governance as the company matures and both build and retain a highly engaged, efficient and functional board and management team.
As well as investing in the immersive technology sector in particular, we have a strong track record of investing in the wider software and digital sectors, having invested in over 150 software and digital companies across the UK to date.