Investor Newsletter H1 2023
August 4, 2023
Technology and Fund Updates
Welcome to our H1 Investor Newsletter edition for the second half of 2023. This Newsletter will present an update on the investment activity of the Wesley Clover Global Ecosystem of Technology companies as well as updates on the expansion of New Funds, LP participation opportunities of the Alacrity Global program and what trends we are watching in technology, investment, and policy.
In this Edition:
- Portfolio Investment Highlights
- Leadership Article
- Our Latest Watch List
- New Initiatives
- Investment Spotlight
- Alacrity Entrepreneurship News
- Upcoming Events
Portfolio Investment Highlights:
The Alacrity Global Ecosystem has raised over $95M USD in the first half of 2023. The tech verticals of note were Ecommerce Enabler, Secure Tech, Construction Tech and IoT. You can follow the links below for details:
- Wesley Clover Direct Investment Raises: Solink $60 Million USD Series C
- L-Spark Portfolio Raises: Tough Commerce $2M CAD
- Alacrite France Portfolio Raises: VizioSense €1.4 EUR and OverSoc €3.8 EUR
- Alacrity Turkey Portfolio Raises: Segmentify
- Alacrity Canada Portfolio Company Certn $30 million USD Series B extension
The Secret to Accelerating Time to Value for Digital Workplace Initiatives is Monitoring
Today’s workplace looks quite different than it did just three years ago. Knowledge workers who once worked a traditional 9-5 week from the office pre-pandemic now split their time between their home offices, the traditional office and places in between. According to Gartner, by the end of 2023 48% of knowledge workers globally will work either fully remote or hybrid, with the remaining 52% working in the office. Enabling this shift are cloud-based communication tools like Microsoft Office 365 and Teams that keep people connected and productive no matter where they are located. The ability to connect from anywhere has become an expectation for most knowledge workers.
Our Watch List
Cyber Security:
HYAS
The secret to cybersecurity lies in interrupting and updating Causation Chains
5G:
THINKRF
thinkRF is selected to the Telecom Council’s Class of 2023!
Cleantech:
EmendFund
How One Visionary is Using AI to Safeguard Water in a Thirsty World
Wesley Clover & Alacrity Content
Content for global investor, entrepreneur, and partner audiences.
Wesley Clover issues updates on the portfolio each Quarter on Technology,
Hospitality and Real Estate business.
Find information related to Alacrity Funds, Hubs, and Companies.
5 initiatives we are working on this year are:
- New Alacrity Funds & Accelerators under development: UAE, ASEAN, India, and South America.
- Attract LPS for Alacrity Funds (France, Canada and Turkey).
- Support the acceleration of Pre-seed companies to investible revenue levels.
- Enhance engagement with Global Investor and Industry Analyst community via briefings and informative content.
- Expand the WCS Global systems integrators offering in Europe, MEA, LATAM and APAC.
Deal Book: Investment Spotlight
Over the next 12 months we are anticipating further Early-Stage Investment attraction specifically in IoT, HealthCare IT, Productivity/Management Software, HRTech, and Security & Monitoring. Companies have continued to grow in 2023 and are looking to accelerate further global growth. We have 9 companies looking to raise funds over the next 6-8 months. Find the investment profile details below:
Website: celestrahealth.com
Industry/Vertical: Healthcare / Digital Health
Location: Ottawa, Canada
Investment Timeline: 2023-2024
Active Users: 90+ (Phase II clinical trial in US, UK and Canada)
Funding Target: Seed, $500k
Targets: Angels, VCs
Celestra Health Systems is a health tech company revolutionizing MS treatment using cutting-edge wearable tech, AI, and smartphone apps. Selected for the prestigious UK NHS Digital Health Partnership Award, their solution discreetly monitors key disease indicators, allowing for informed treatment decisions and rapid therapy assessment. With renowned neurologists on their team and Phase II trials underway, Celestra Health has received $450K CAD in grants and has pending applications for $1.8M.
Current Investors: Wesley Clover International, Debt
Strategic Customers: Global pharmaceutical firms, UK National Health Service (NHS), US Neurology and Rehabilitation clinics specializing in MS.
Website: https://cliniconex.com/
Industry/Vertical: Healthcare Technology, Ambulatory & Long-Term Care.
Location: North America
Investment Timeline: 2023-2024
Estimated ARR CAD: 5 Million +
Funding Target: Series A, $10 Million
Targets: VC and Corporate Venture
Serving medical professionals, patients, and their families Cliniconex is one of North America’s fastest-growing healthcare engagement solutions with an accelerated increase in year over year growth for the last three years. Our solution coordinates the exchange of information and communications from more than 5,000 medical professionals and 1,600 senior care providers, to trigger more than 800,000 meaningful engagements each month.
The Cliniconex software provides a host of services that automate repetitive tasks so staff can focus on caring for patients and/or residents. Digital transformation in healthcare is growing rapidly with national health spending projected to reach $6.2 trillion by 2028* in the U.S. alone. Cliniconex is seeking capital to accelerate expansion: 1) within existing strategic partnerships, 2) to adjacent senior care segments in new markets through product extension.
Current Investors: Angels and Strategic Investors.
Strategic Partners/Customers: PointClickCare, Loblaws, Telus Health
Website: https://teldio.com/
Industry/Vertical: B2B, SaaS, Workflow Automation
Location: North America
Investment Timeline: April 2024
Estimated ARR CAD: $2.5 Million+
Funding Target: Series A, $6 Million+
Investor Targets: VC and Corporate Venture
Teldio enables enterprises to integrate systems and human resources that power their core business. The company’s solutions deliver digitized automated workflows utilizing industrial gateways, asset monitoring and tracking, video and access control. Integrated automated deployments with on-premise and cloud models, enable dramatic productivity improvements while enabling end customers to extract additional value from their current and legacy systems. Teldio main markets are manufacturing, utilities and education.
Company has grown steadily from 2021 to 2023 and projected to accelerate in 2024. The plan is to utilize the funding to accelerate organic growth and enable expansion outside North and South America.
Current Investors: VC, Corporate, Angel
Strategic Customers: Amazon, Tesla, SpaceX, Pfizer, Marriott, P&G, 3M, GE, Nissan, Cargill, Tyson Foods, NYSE, Honda
Website: https://thinkrf.com/
Industry/Vertical: Security & Monitor, Software-defined spectrum analysis platform
Location: North America
Investment Timeline: 2023
Estimated Annual Revenue CAD: $2.7 Million+
Funding Target: Pre-Series, $6 Million+
Investor Targets: Institutional Angels, Angels
Wireless spectrum is a scarce and expensive resource. Wireless operators in Canada paid $3.5 billion for spectrum licenses in 2019. These operators have little actionable intelligence about what spectrum to license and where to license it. These challenges are worsened by the complexity of next generation 5G deployments.
ThinkRF built its reputation designing and selling highly accurate low-cost spectrum analyzers delivering capacity of 8kHz to 45GHz, these ranges of network are extremely important to wireless networked sensors in the world of 5G. ThinkRF is currently working with leading Operators to instrument cities around the world, collecting data about what is happening in the spectrum, and using AI to create actionable intelligence. ThinkRF sells multi-year subscriptions to these insights to operators and regulators. To further develop this offering, ThinkRF is seeking $3M in the short term to bridge to a larger VC round later this year. Having grown revenues 3x last year, the plan will be to go public in five years with over $100M in ARR.
Current Investors: VC, Corporate, Angel, Institutional Angel
Website: https://thrivemycareer.com/
Industry/Vertical: HRTech, Career Management
Location: North America
Investment Timeline: 2023
Estimated Annual Revenue CAD: $2.4 Million+
Funding Target: Series A, $10 Million
Investor Targets: VC and Corporate Venture
Thrive Career Wellness platform is an enterprise career marketplace built to help any individual advance their career. Employers deposit dollars into the platform which individuals can use to access over 70+ services in our integrated marketplace. Thrive is used by employers for career transition, internal redeployment, and career management. Thrive is growing over 100% Year over Year and has customers in eight different countries around the world. Thrive is seeking capital to increase investment in enterprise customer requirements while growing and building direct sales and customer service teams across active geographies.
Current Investors: Angels, Institutional Angels, VC
Strategic Customers: Walmart, Scotiabank, Lowes Canada
Website: https://validient.com/
Industry/Vertical: LegalTech, Compliance Management, Customer Engagement
Location: Newport, United Kingdom
Investment Timeline: 2023
Active Users: 1
Funding Target: Seed, £750k
Investor Targets: Angels, VC
Validient is a digital client onboarding and compliance management system built for the regulated industries. Validient provides a complete onboarding process for clients which includes KYB, KYC, AML, and PEP checks. Validient extends further to streamline internal processes such as ongoing monitoring of due diligence, action management for compliance teams, risk assessments and management, and proof of funds and wealth utilising open banking.
Current Investors: Founders, Wesley Clover, Government
Strategic Partners/Customers: Capital Law
Website: https://whispeak.io/
Industry/Vertical: Voice biometrics, Cybersecurity, speaker authentication
Location: Lille, France
Investment Timeline: 2023
Estimated ARR USD: $2.4 Million+
Funding Target: Series A, €4 Million
Investor Targets: VC, BA
Whispeak provides a solution to simplify authentication processes by using voice as a biometric factor. This allows users to access their accounts, give sensitive commands, or be recognized at call centers, making their digital journeys secure and easy. The solution is easily deployable through SaaS, on premise or embedded versions, and can be used on all points of contact where microphones are present. Additionally, it is natively compatible with RGPD for user privacy protection.
Current Investors: Founders, Alacrité France, Finovam Gestion, Debt
Strategic Partners/Customers: Thalès, Continental, Airbus, Safran
Website: https://trust-eat.com/
Industry/Vertical: Cold Chain monitoring, food industry, IoT
Location: Lille, France
Investment Timeline: 2023
Active Users: 250+
Funding Target: Series A, 3M€
Investor Targets: VC, BA
TrustEat provides a solution to protect against health risks caused by cold chain breaks in the food industry. It helps professionals improve the quality of their products by ensuring sanitary control and reassuring consumers. TrustEat’s application integrates refrigeration sensor data for end-to-end supervision of the cold chain, targeting risk areas and alerting before problems occur. With over 250 customers, TrustEat supports all actors in the food industry, including restaurants, caterers, bakeries, large-scale distribution, and the food industry.
Current Investors: Founders, Alacrité France, Wesley Clover, Finovam Gestion, debt
Strategic Partners/Customers: Intermarché, Biocoop, Kimoco, Super U, Hôtel Mercure
Website: surple.com
Industry/Vertical: Cleantech/Fintech
Location: UK
Investment Timeline: Q3-Q4 2023
Active Users: 1300+ Business Subscribers, 2 white-label partners
Funding Target: £1.2M
Investor Targets: Seed-stage VC’s and Angels
Surple build software that helps organisations to optimise their energy use. Through their platform, they are enabling businesses to change the way people view energy. Surple visualises and maps energy usage against trends to identify and reduce the amount of energy that organisations consume.
Current Investors: Wesley Clover, Welsh Government, Waterloo Foundation
Strategic Customers: Yü Energy (UK utility with 25,000+ SME customers), Newport City Council (large municipality)
Alacrity News
Alacrity Canada
Alacrity Canada runs programs in support of early-stage technology companies. To-date these programs have supported the development of companies with value greater than $700M. Given the success of the Alacrity program the Emend Vision Fund is being developed with the intent to invest in high potential early-stage companies with strong environmental and sustainability impacts. The fund will focus on emerging opportunities through Industrial Transformation, Big Data and Critical Infrastructure, Clean Water and Food Security. For more information contact the Emend Fund on how you can support.
Alacrity France
Alacrite France is supporting the development of 11 active NewCos to-date, each received Startup funding of €250K+. In the first half of 2023, Alacrité incorporated 1 new company, and 2 NewCos are currently seeking funding.
Alacrity Affiliate: L-SPARK
The L-Spark portfolio to-date L-Spark has had 7 companies exit with a cumulative exit value over $200 Million USD.
Alacrity Mexico
Alacrity Mexico continues to support the development of 3 portfolio companies in the Enterprise Contract Lifecycle Management Software (CLMS), Fintech, and Secure Tech for eCommerce. The first private outside funding round is expected in late 2023.
Alacrity Ottawa
Alacrity Ottawa was launched in partnership with the University of Ottawa and L-Spark and will be recruiting cohorts of entrepreneurs to lead future Startup tech companies in 2023.
Alacrity Turkey: Fund II Under Development
Alacrity Turkey is launching its second fund, a $30M USD seed-stage “SaaS Globalization” Venture Fund II to invest in Turkish B2B SaaS start-ups.
Alacrity U.K.
Alacrity UK continues to support startup ecosystem through programmes to include:
- Digital Customer Acquisition course
- Wales Cyber Hub
- Community Renewal Fund
- Media Hub commercialisation programme
The current Alacrity portfolio has grown to 17 active NewCos, each NewCo receiving seed funding of £250K+.
The Cyber Security Program launched in 2020 has now graduated 4 NewCos.
Alacrity ASEAN New Fund Under Exploration
Wesley Clover undertaking exploration of a new fund in the ASEAN region. Early-Stage Venture Builder model for SAAS technology 5 ++2 years, targeted fund size of $10 Million USD.
Alacrity India, New Delhi New Fund Under Exploration
Wesley Clover undertaking exploration of new fund in the New Delhi. Early-Stage Venture builder in Alacrity India model for SAAS technology 5 ++2 years, targeted fund size of $10 Million USD.
Alacrity South America New Fund Under Exploration
Wesley Clover undertaking exploration of a new fund in South America. Early-Stage Venture Builder model for SAAS technology 5 ++2 years, targeted fund size of $10 Million USD.
Alacrity UAE New Fund Under Development
Wesley Clover undertaking exploration of a new fund in the UAE. Early-Stage Venture Builder model for SAAS technology 5 ++2 years, targeted fund size of $10 Million USD.
2023 H2 Ecosystem Events
- L-Spark SaaS Showcase – Ottawa, September, 2023
- L-Spark SaaSNorth Event – November 16-18, 2023
For more information contact Joshua Seerattan via email.
Contact Joshua Seerattan
Thank You
For any Investment related enquiries on portfolio companies, Alacrity Funds or for a Wesley Clover Briefing please contact Joshua Seerattan.
About Wesley Clover International
Wesley Clover International is a private, global investment management firm and holding company with over a Billion Dollars of Assets Under Management in Real-Estate & Technology. The focus is to fund and grow successful technology companies. More than 100 firms have been created to-date by Wesley Clover with more than $1.0B in direct investment. The portfolio regularly has more than 40 investments under active management around the globe. All are committed to next-generation Cloud and SaaS applications for fixed and mobile communications, video analytics, security, customer engagement, business enablement and more. Deal flow includes companies within the Enterprise Accelerator, L-SPARK, as well as the Alacrity Global Ecosystem of technology partnership funds which have been deployed in 6 international regions.