Zegami closes $3m round

Zegami, a UK-based big data analytics software developer, has closed a A$3.9m ($3m) funding round backed by University of Oxford, the Financial Review reported yesterday.

Parkwalk Advisors also participated in the round, as did unnamed high net-worth individuals.

Founded in 2016, Zegami is based in part on research conducted at Oxford’s Computational Biology Research Group. The platform enables users to catalogue and search large sets of data, such as art pieces in a museum’s collection.

The money will enable Zegami to develop a cloud-based version of its offering, to boost market awareness of the product, including in new verticals such as sports analytics, and to launch a consumer product.

Zegami had originally targeted a $10m close for the round, but according to co-founder Samuel Conway the spinout reconsidered the amount as it was deemed too large for a young business.

In February 2016, university venturing fund Oxford Sciences Innovation contributed to a funding round of undisclosed size, alongside Parkwalk Advisors, which contributed through its University of Oxford Isis Fund II.

Conway said: “It is all about staged growth. We have proven that we have a product that we can sell and our aim now is to break even so we add value to the company.

“Sometimes people think success in this environment is related to the amount you can raise, and that is not always the case. The amount we have raised we believe is enough to get the company kick-started.

“In the next two years we want to break even or be profitable, and from there we can look at that next level of investment. You start to talk in orders of magnitude that if you grew it to that size at home, it would be significant company in the Australian landscape, but it is just another company over here.”

Global University Venturing will feature an interview with Samuel Conway in its upcoming profile of the University of Oxford ecosystem.