eCommerce platform Aero has secured £750,000 from Maven Capital Partners.
The funding will enable Aero to invest in its sales and marketing activities and open an office in Newcastle.
A total of £550,000 was provided via the North East Development Fund, supported by the European Regional Development Fund and managed by Maven, £200,000 was provided by existing shareholders in this round taking the total investment to date to over £1m.
The funds will also allow the business to create a number of new roles as part of its plan for expansion product enhancements.
Aero’s platform, developed in-house, offers allows retailers to have eCommerce sites built by Aero’s agency partners.
The firm is led by CEO Richard Bendelow, who co-founded and led the growth of Visualsoft, one of the UK’s largest ecommerce agencies, before selling the business in a management buyout in 2014.
Bendelow is joined by former colleagues Matt Burton and Tim Spratt who were respectively CTO and Senior Developer at Visualsoft.
“We are excited to work with Maven on the next stage of our growth journey,” said Bendelow.
“The investment provides the perfect springboard to progressively develop the platform and take it further to market. There are already a number of Aero sites live that are out performing the competition in terms of speed, infrastructure costs and conversion rates.
“The pipeline of sites in development via our agencies is also exceeding expectation, these are truly exciting times for Aero!”
Michael Vassallo, investment director at Maven, added: “We are delighted to support Richard and the team as they embark on a programme of growth.
“Aero will support smaller agencies to attract enterprise level ecommerce website customers and provide an innovative, out of the box solution to those clients.
“Online sales and ecommerce platforms are highly attractive growth markets and we look forward to supporting Aero as it executes its expansion plans.”