The Surrey University start-up received the money from Mercia Fund Management.
TorqBak, which helps businesses target potential customers on Twitter, has secured £150,000 in funding from Mercia Fund Management, a UK-based venture capital fund working with British businesses that offer proven commercial traction.
The start-up, based at SETsquared’s innovation centre at Surrey University, uses a mixture of a mixture of natural language processing and machine learning technology to analyse the content of tweets and let brands engage with potential customers.
TorqBak was among only a handful of SETsquared start-ups to pitch at its London investment showcase in November 2013. It will use the funding to ramp up its sales campaign, targeting big name brands and agencies across a range of industry sectors, expecting the money to have a big impact on its rate of growth. The company will also double the size of its team over the next few months.
SetSquared, set up in 2003, is a partnership between the universities of Bath, Bristol, Exeter, Southampton and Surrey. It has incubated more than 1,000 companies, with a success-rate of 90%, which have raised a combined £1bn ($1.67bn).
Sarah De’Lacy, SetSquared’s Surrey centre director, said: “Mercia Fund Management’s backing of TorqBak is further evidence that it has huge potential as a business. That’s why we brought it into our incubator and why we tipped it as one of our ‘cream of the crop’ businesses to pitch at our investor showcase. This deal has proven that our SETsquared investment showcase is mutually beneficial, both for our businesses and for our network of investors, and we are looking forward to holding another later this year.”
