alva Reputation Analysis Ltd, the business behind the reputation monitoring and analysis platform alva, has secured a £1.5 million funding package from Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank to support its growth strategy.

The alva platform uses AI technology to deliver a real-time global monitoring, alerting and insight solution to international big businesses. The offering integrates reputation, communication and business intelligence to help clients make decisions relevant to the company’s strategy, its products, competitors, issues and stakeholders.

The funding will be used to accelerate the development of alva’s technology platform to incorporate predictive analytics. alva’s technology team will augment its existing statistical sentiment scoring methodology with machine learning, evolve its analytics infrastructure and expand data volumes.

The company is also expected to increase its number of staff by 30%, recruiting for its commercial and technology development teams.

The business will also use the new capital to fund the re-launch and repositioning of the alva brand in existing and new markets.

alva is headquartered in London and also has offices in New York. It has raised more than £3 million in funding from investors, including Grafton Capital, prior to the Growth Finance package from Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank.

Richard Goldsmith, chief finance officer of alva, said: “The funding will provide our business with continued investment in our platform as well as supporting our brand leadership in Connected Intelligence. The team at Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank have been supportive throughout the process and quickly grasped the key drivers of our business. This allowed us to complete the transaction in a short period of time, with minimal disruption to the business.”

Stephen Fahy, Senior Director, Growth Finance at Clydesdale and Yorkshire Bank, said: “The pioneering technology and methodology that alva has developed provides vital reputational insights, helping companies to understand stakeholder sentiment and use it to make strategic decisions. The Growth Finance team is proud to support such an ambitious SME as it looks to scale-up operations.”