Mercia backs Manchester’s Intechnica with £3.5m investment

Investment group Mercia Technologies has completed a £3.5m direct investment into a Manchester-based software specialist Intechnica as part of a £5m funding round.

With revenue growth of more than 150 per cent during the last three years, Intechnica has already developed a high-profile client base that includes Ted Baker, AO.com, Pets at Home and Avis. The investment will enable Intechnica, which helps its clients to manage high and variable website traffic demand, including the removal of unwanted traffic from bots, crawlers and spiders, to scale up its TrafficDefender product suite.

This latest funding will be used to boost its sales and marketing resources, including overseas expansion, and Jeremy Gidlow, managing director of Intechnica, said: “We are pleased to have our longstanding investors reaffirm their support for Intechnica with this latest fundraise. The capital will allow us to scale up the delivery of our cloud-based solutions to meet growing demand in sectors such as online retail, insurance, digital publishing, gaming and ticketing. It will also help us to deploy TrafficDefender quickly and effectively to domestic and international customers, allowing them to manage and analyse high volumes of online traffic.”

Dr Mark Payton, chief executive of Mercia Technologies, said: “Intechnica comes from one of Mercia’s managed funds which is led by Will Clark, and invests across the North of England. Working with management, Mercia’s team has helped to build out the board and broaden the expertise of the management team ahead of the business becoming a meaningful balance sheet investment for Mercia. All of us have experienced the frustration of overloaded websites and TrafficDefender is a working solution to a global challenge, as product and service retailing continues to move online.”

The funding round, which also included existing private investors, takes Mercia’s direct shareholding to 24.3 per cent. It includes a £1.3m convertible loan facility by Mercia, which is subject to the achievement of Intechnica hitting certain future performance milestones.