Imperial Innovations Group Regulatory News (IVO)

RNS Reach

26 May 2016

Imperial Innovations Group plc

£3 million funding round for portfolio company Inflowmatix

Imperial Innovations Group plc (AIM: IVO or 'the Group', 'Innovations') announces the completion of a £3.0 million Series A funding round in Inflowmatix (the "company"), a water network data analytics business spun out from Imperial College London.

Innovations contributed £1.8 million to the round and now holds a 57.2% undiluted stake in the Company. New co-investor Parkwalk Advisors Limited contributed £1.2 million.

Inflowmatix aims to provide water flow and pipe health analytics to water utilities worldwide, enabling them to diagnose hydraulic instabilities and failures, reduce bursts, prioritise network maintenance and reduce operating costs.

The company's technology is based on research carried out in Dr Ivan Stoianov's InfraSense Labs, in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering at Imperial College London. Inflowmatix has developed a prototype product (patent-pending) and is currently engaging with potential clients to trial its systems in the field and validate their financial benefits.

Inflowmatix has an interdisciplinary team with expertise in hydraulic and water quality modelling, embedded electronic systems and data analytics. Since its founding in July 2015, the Company has expanded its management team, including new CEO Steve George.

Steve has worked in the water industry since 1999 and joined Inflowmatix from the Suez Group, where he worked in business and market development. He holds a wealth of experience in providing services and software solutions to water network management. This industry expertise has helped Inflowmatix engage closely with water companies in order to ensure that the data and solutions the company is developing is valuable to customers.

The new funding will enable the Company to continue to engage with customers in field trials and launch a first commercial version of their high-speed logger.

Dr Stoianov and Dr David Parker continue in their roles as CSO and Chairman of the Board, respectively. Parkwalk representative Alun Williams also joins the Board.

Kelsey Lynn Skinner, Director Technology Ventures at Imperial Innovations, added:

"Inflowmatix has made strong progress since our last round, engaging with customers and developing its end-to-end solution towards commercialisation. We have been working with Ivan Stoianov on Inflowmatix since its initial IP development and are delighted to continue our relationship with this new investment.

"We would also like to welcome Alun from Parkwalk Advisors to the Board. We have co-invested with Parkwalk in a number of our other ventures and we look forward to working alongside them in this exciting opportunity."

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Notes to editors

About Imperial Innovations - www.imperialinnovations.co.uk 

Imperial Innovations Group plc ("Innovations") creates, builds and invests in pioneering technology companies and licensing opportunities developed from outstanding scientific research from the 'Golden Triangle', the geographical region broadly bounded by London, Cambridge and Oxford. This area has an unrivalled cluster of outstanding academic research and technology businesses, and is home to four of the world's top 10 universities, as well as leading research institutions, the cream of the UK's science and technology businesses and many of its leading investors.

Innovations supports scientists and entrepreneurs in the commercialisation of their ideas, through the licensing of intellectual property, by leading the formation of new companies, by recruiting high-calibre management teams and by providing investment and encouraging co-investment. Innovations remains an active investor over the life of its portfolio companies, with the majority of Innovations' investment going into businesses in which it is already a shareholder.

Since becoming a public company in 2006, Innovations has raised more than £430 million of equity from investors, which has enabled it to invest in some of the most exciting spin-outs to come out of UK academic research. In addition, the Group has agreed £80.0 million in loan facilities from the European Investment Bank (EIB).

Between Innovations' admission to AIM (August 2006) and 31 July 2015, Innovations had invested a total of £236.8 million across its portfolio companies, which had raised collectively investment of £1.3 billion.