Belfast-headquartered software company AuditComply has become the first business to benefit from technology and investment as part of a strategic partnership between First Derivatives and Business Growth Fund (BGF).
Founded by tech entrepreneur Kevin Donaghy, AuditComply provides enterprise risk management software across the engineering, manufacturing, food and logistics industries. Its customers include Autoliv, UniTrunk and KDD.
The company will use the new funding from BGF and existing investors Clarendon/CoFundNI to accelerate its growth, as well as First Derivatives’ Kx technology and expertise to develop new software modules that will provide powerful, real-time analytics for supply chain auditing.
“As a high-tech start-up going through significant growth we are very excited to be working with BGF and First Derivatives to help grow the company and become a leader in enterprise risk management,” said AuditComply CEO Kevin Donaghy.
The First Derivatives and BGF partnership combines access to BGF’s £2.5bn balance sheet and network of board level executives with First Derivatives’ technology and support.
Together, the mix of equity and technology has been designed to help high-potential and established companies scale up through unlocking new markets or disrupting existing ones.
Matt Singh of BGF said: “There is a clear opportunity for AuditComply to capitalise on the momentum by continuing to strengthen its platform. The team, led by Kevin, is experienced and ambitious and we are delighted to be backing them.
“We are also pleased that this is our first investment as part of our strategic partnership with First Derivatives, which further extends BGF’s reach into earlier stage businesses. BGF’s network, and our connections to industry experts such as First Derivatives, are helping us to get even more capital to more companies in the UK & Ireland.”
Brian Conlon, CEO, First Derivatives, added: “Kx is a key enabler of disruption across multiple industries and is ideally suited as a platform to manage the most demanding analytics challenges.
“We are particularly pleased to have worked alongside BGF on this agreement and look forward to building on our strategic partnership through similar deals in the future.”