ILX Group has secured £900,000 of investment from Octopus Ventures.

Business training software provider ILX Group has secured £900,000 of investment from the Octopus Capital for Enterprise Fund.

The funding will be used to reduce the company’s bank debt and to support further expansion.

Investment firm Octopus Ventures currently holds an 8.5 per cent stake in the company, and the additional investment will increase this to 20 per cent. Chris Allner, managing director at Octopus Ventures, will join the board of ILX as a non-executive director.

Allner comments: ‘[We] saw the opportunity to invest in a business with the potential to grow rapidly, particularly overseas.’

London-based ILX provides computer-based training and consultancy services to corporate clients in areas including IT service management and business finance. In the year to March 2010 the AIM-listed company declared a pre-tax profit of £1.1 million on a turnover of £14.7 million.

The Capital for Enterprise Fund was launched in January 2009 to as part of the previous government’s rescue package for growing companies struggling to access finance, and Octopus manages £30 million of the £75 million fund.