SkyDox has received £20 million worth of growth capital from the Business Growth Fund (BGF) and Scottish Equity Partners (SEP).
As well as receiving capital from the two firms, SkyDox, which provides cloud-enabled document collaboration software aimed at the enterprise sector, has seen investment contributions from its management and other employee shareholders.
According to a statement, the deal will allow SkyDox to join up with Workshare, a document comparison and policy management business. Currently SkyDox has customers including the NHS, accountancy firm PwC and the European Court of Human Rights.
The £20 million of capital will be put to work by seeing London-based SkyDox and Workshare launch what it describes as the first policy-based document collaboration platform, under the Workshare brand. The collaboration will allow business users to work across mobile, tablet and desktop devices over the cloud.
As part of the deal, Duncan Lewis, former board member of Vislink and Equant and current chairman of NextriaOne, Apsmart and Nuim, will join the board of SkyDox as an independent non-executive chairman.
Anthony Fox, CEO of SkyDox, comments, ‘The investment will enable us to deliver on our plans for developing the most comprehensive, effective and secure collaboration platform on the market.’
The joint deal marks the third time that BGF has joined forces with another firm to make an investment. Its first came back in January when it teamed up with Amadeus Capital Partners and Van den Ende & Deitmars to close a £16 million backing of social video advertising business Unruly.
It then followed the Unruly deal up by linking up with NVM Private Equity to support the growth aspirations of pub chain Wear Inns by way of a £10 million deal.
Chris Hodges, investment director at BGF, adds, ‘We look forward to working alongside the management team and Duncan in his role as non-executive chairman.
‘We are also delighted to be co-investing with SEP and by combining our respective investments we have been able to make a significant impact.’
Hodges says that BGF will ‘increasingly’ look to work with private equity firms, angel investors and venture capital trusts.
