Manchester Tech Trust have launched angel investment group Manchester Tech Trust Angels in a bid to tackle the number one problem facing the city’s tech cluster.
The experienced technology investors recently made their first investment of £350,000 in biomedical AI company, Biorelate, in a £700k round alongside Maven Equity Finance and Catapult Ventures.
Manchester Tech Trust believes the city remains critically underserved by angel investment when compared to other major UK cities.
The charity decided to organise meetings to introduce potential investee companies to the angels and, following several meetings, this culminated this year in the investment in Biorelate.
Founded in 2014, Biorelate uses existing knowledge to help scientists solve difficult biomedical challenges, enabling smarter and faster research and development.
The company’s technology uses AI to curate data and information that’s relevant to biomedical concepts from published literature such as journals, patents and clinical trials.
Biorelate’s technology platform extracts more value from data in science texts, 80 per cent of which is unused.
The Trust now plans to expand the membership of its angel group, raising the profile of angel investment in technology in the region and making it easier for early stage companies to find it.
“Like many investors, we’re looking for scalable businesses in high growth sectors so Biorelate was a good fit from the outset,” said Manchester Tech Trust angel Nathan Day.
“We were also impressed by Dan and his team and this gave us confidence to look at the business fundamentals and then syndicate the investment across the angel group. I was delighted to join the Biorelate board and look forward to working with Dan and the team.
Manchester Tech Trust, in partnership with the University of Manchester, is hosting a conference on 28th November at the National Graphene Institute.