Cytora is in a position to enable clients to observe the world using the web, producing a massive disruptive impact for all sorts of information, analytics and decision support companies.
-Anne Dobree
The round was led by Cambridge Enterprise, the commercialisation arm of the University of Cambridge, Parkwalk Advisors and an influential group of angel investors including Alan Morgan (Chairman of MMC Ventures). Terms of the investment were not disclosed, and the round was oversubscribed.
The funding will be used to drive further growth in core markets of supply chain risk management and financial services, and to further develop the underlying technology in the area of event detection. The round builds on earlier investment from Paul Forster, the company’s Investor Director, Co-founder and former CEO of Indeed. Cytora is also the first start-up ever to receive funding from the Judge Business School at the University of Cambridge, after being incubated at Accelerate Cambridge.
The investment comes as organisations are increasingly looking to leverage the power of web data to manage risk in a more dynamic way. Dataminr, Ban.jo and Kensho are similar companies serving different markets – which have recently raised investment rounds.
Using a big data analytics approach, Cytora assembles data about multiple categories of risk in real time, providing customers a unique backbone of factual intelligence in which to manage supply chain risk, commodity risk and others risk types ahead of the curve.
To do this, Cytora collects raw data from millions of different web sources, detects and geolocates real world events in real time (e.g. port strikes, protests, weather events, fires etc.), and then distributes the data in multiple ways to make it easy to integrate and use. The Cytora event detection engine is flexible and can be used to gather event data about any phenomena that takes place in the physical world.
- Risk advisories and consultancies use Cytora data to produce risk models, products and intelligence.
- Airlines use Cytora data to spot ground to air missiles that have been reported
- Global corporates use Cytora data to monitor the world in real time for events that could disrupt their supply chain
- Investment Banks and Hedge Funds use Cytora data to understand the impact of global risks on asset exposure
Anne Dobree, Head of Seed Fund investment at Cambridge Enterprise said: “With increasingly connected global markets and operations spanning limitless geographic locations, the task of monitoring events and anticipating their direct and indirect impacts is becoming more and more complex. Cytora is in a position to enable clients to observe the world using the web, producing a massive disruptive impact for all sorts of information, analytics and decision support companies.”
Alan Morgan, Chairman of MMC Ventures, said: “All businesses need to identify risks and how to mitigate these. What is much harder but more valuable is to identify events that will trigger those risks and their propensity and the resulting impact on the business. Cytora does this, and the applications of its capability go beyond national boundaries (e.g. supply chain, airline routes, etc.) and benefit principals as well as intermediaries in the business of risk assessment.”
Richard Hartley, Co-founder of Cytora, added: “Increasingly the web is providing a window on to the world, to a high level of factual detail. Our mission is to enable organisations to monitor supply chains, infrastructures and entire geographies using the power of web information. We are excited to receive support from a prestigious set of investors, and this funding will allow us to develop the product further and align it with the needs of different verticals.”
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