A £12m series B, a £57.5m fund for Northern SMEs, a hoverbike and more in The Week in Tech

Welcome to The Week in Tech, your video roundup of the week’s top technology news. This episode, we’ve got almost £30m of funding rounds, a £57.5m fund for Northern SMEs, a hoverbike and much more.

Investments

Reading-based customer engagement platform Ecrebo closed a £12m Series B funding round. The company, which closed a $6.3m Series A in December 2014, drew support from investors including Sir Keith Mills, the founder of Air Miles and Nectar customer loyalty programmes.

UK electric vehicle charging company POD Point raised a £7.5m Series C. Draper Esprit led the round with a £5m investment, with £2m being committed by Barclays Capital and £550,000 from angel investors.

Edinburgh-based analytics platform TVSquared received $6.5m in a round led by West Coast Capital. The company also drew support from the Scottish Investment Bank and existing investors.

Other rounds this week include the $3.75m raised by AR startup Zappar, the £1m Seed by Glasgow-based Adimo and the seven-figure round closed by Manchester firm Zaptic.

British news

Maven Capital Partners is to allocate £57.5m to growing SMEs across the North of England after inking a deal with the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund. Ryan Bevington, the fund’s manager, said he sees exceptional potential in the region’s tech sector.

International story

Overseas, Berlin-based early-stage investor Project A announced a €180m technology investment fund to invest in startups across Europe. The fund’s portfolio already includes many UK tech companies including Lostmyname, WorldRemit and ZenMate.

Download

This episode’s download of the week is one for the kids. The Gruffalo Spotter is an augmented reality app that can be used on trails at 26 Forestry Commission England sites. Families can follow clues on an interactive trail and track signs of their favourite characters based on best-selling picture book.

And finally

A Russian startup has created a hoverbike. The single-seat aircraft is capable of lifting a person in the air with full passenger control. Called the Scorpion-3 the quadcopter is designed to make flying accessible to the masses.

That’s all for this week’s episode of The Week in Tech. For more technology news, subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Twitter.

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