The Greater Manchester Investment Fund (GMIF) has been joined by turnaround investor Jon Moulton’s family office in a £4 million equity backing.
DataCentred is the recipient of the funding, and will use the capital to continue the development of its open source cloud computing platform.
Founded two years ago by Mike Kelly, DataCentred addresses the big data, video-on-demand and compute-heavy application markets by providing colocation capacity as well as a cloud computing and storage platform.
Explaining his decision to invest in the company through family office Perscitus Advisers, Moulton, whose Better Capital fund invests in struggling companies, says, ‘We always look to invest in an opportunity in which we see high market growth, management commitment and management capability.
‘We believe that DataCentred is one of those happy combinations, and we look forward to our faith and early-stage commitment being rewarded by DataCentred’s future success.’
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The £4 million deal sees GMIF, which backs businesses in the Greater Manchester region, commit £1 million – having separately provided £1 million in 2013. Moulton and the North West Fund for Venture Capital are injecting £750,000 each alongside DataCentred founder Kelly’s £500,000 contribution.
Kelly comments, ‘[The funding] enables us to complete our first site and deliver cloud services for our clients. It also allows choice to clients and operators in rebalancing the UK’s internet infrastructure towards the north.
‘With still only 20 per cent of companies using third party data centres at all, there is a huge opportunity for an operator with the right balance to develop a business that helps companies improve their efficiency and profitability.’
Serving alongside Kelly in the DataCentred management team is chief investment officer for the Greater Manchester Combined Authority Bill Enevoldson – who will be serving as chairman.
According to DataCentred, Greater Manchester is an ideal base for the business as it is the site of the second largest cluster of creative and digital businesses in Europe and has the MediaCityUK campus in Salford.
Greater Manchester Local Enterprise Partnership chairman Mike Blackburn adds, ‘As DataCentred expands, its impact on improving the local economy and employment will increase, and its data centre services will help enhance the connectivity, efficiency and competitiveness of business in Greater Manchester and beyond.’
