Acorn Angels invest in social peer-to-peer finance platform Flender

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Padraig Canavan (Acorn Angels) and Oli Cavanagh (Flender)

Padraig Canavan (Acorn Angels) and Oli Cavanagh (Flender)

Irish-based company Flender has won a funding package including the first investment by the Derry/Londonderry Acorn Angel Group, which included Padraig Canavan, Liam Bradley and Paul McElvaney. Flender is an online platform that creates a marketplace for businesses and individuals in the Republic of Ireland to borrow and lend money safely and at better rates than those offered by the banks.

In a significant development following this investment, Flender was awarded full FCA authorisation to launch in the UK, a market nearly 300 times larger than the Irish Peer-to-Peer market. The Flender UK offering will launch in June.

Flender is the brainchild of Strabane born Oli Cavanagh and business partners Kris Koik and Jeremy Davies Betancourt. They have secured funding of nearly £1M to develop the opportunity. This marks the first investment by the Acorn Angels group, whose focus is on investing in the North West and who hope to attract more businesses to pitch for investment.

As well as the Acorn Angels, which was facilitated by Halo at Catalyst Inc, the funding package includes a number of private investors, including Mark Roden, cofounder of Esat Digifone (sold for over £1Billion) and founder of Ding, the world’s largest mobile top-up network. The company is also ‘backed by the crowd’, having reached their £500,000 funding target on crowdfunding platform, Seedrs, in January this year.

Flender enables businesses and consumers to borrow money through their existing networks of friends, family and customers. This market alone is estimated to be worth £2.9bn per annum and it is the aim of company to be first to formalise and automate it.

The platform has just gone live in Ireland and is launching in the UK in June. The company already has many businesses on their flender.ie site seeking a total investment of over €900,000 plus a pipeline of others ready to go onto the platform.

Flender’s Co-Founder, Oli Cavanagh, explains:

“Flender lets people take advantage of a disruptive marketplace that is seeing triple-digit growth, making access to funds easier and generating better returns for lenders. It is a web and mobile offering that lets borrowers decide the amount they wish to repay over a period that suits them. They are quickly matched with lenders who also get the return they want. Borrowing and lending happens via a smartphone, in a paperless transaction, and with automated payments setup and digital contracts that provide a secure legal framework. It also lets businesses reward their customers by inviting them to participate, and directs the repayments to them rather than to a bank. The knock-on effect of this is increased loyalty from customers.”

Liam Bradley, Acorn Angels, commented:

“The ability of the Flender platform to engage lenders from within a business’ own social circles is what the group identified as a real gap in the market. Within an addressable market of over £5.4bn between the UK and Ireland, we believe that the company has an opportunity for massive growth. With our first investment under our belts, we would welcome more companies from the North West applying to the group for investment. ”

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Ulster University is first UK university to roll out of revolutionary Internet of Things technology

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SIGFOX Tech

SIGFOX Tech

Ulster University has become the first university in the UK and the only commercial organisation in Northern Ireland to install the revolutionary Internet of Things (IoT) technology, SIGFOX.

IoT technology supports the networking and sharing of information between physical devices such as smartphones, tablet and other suitably enabled electronic devices via the internet. The innovative SIGFOX wireless technology remotely connects devices with the cloud, transferring valuable data sets for end-user evaluation by phone, tablet or computer.

SIGFOX is the next generation of wireless technology and can work alongside other networks such as Wifi, Bluetooth and 4G. It excels for its wide range connectivity to the internet, as well as its low power consumption and cost. The new SIGFOX base station has been fitted at Ulster University’s Jordanstown campus.

Dr Philip Catherwood from Ulster University’s Engineering Research Institute said: “To give you an idea of the power of SIGFOX, it takes only one base station to service an area the size of Belfast. As the first university in the UK to install a SIGFOX base station, Ulster University is at the forefront of the Internet of Things revolution. This is supported by our world-leading research in connected health and data analytics, as well as our innovative teaching practices.

“This emerging technology offers enormous opportunities for innovation and discovery at Ulster University. We will use SIGFOX enabled technology in our future research into wearable devices; remote data analysis and connected health platforms to further improve patient outcomes and transform the global healthcare sector. The SIGFOX base station at Ulster University will receive a wide range of information from remote healthcare data such as blood analysis, diabetes and heart rate results, to livestock tracking and chemical detection.

“Ulster University’s engineering students will benefit from the new base station as we plan to deliver dedicated modules on this emerging network. This will guarantee students first-hand experience of this next generation technology, helping them to thrive in careers in the fast-paced technology and engineering sectors.

“We are delighted to have the first base station installed at Ulster University, which will benefit not only researchers and students, but also Northern Ireland’s wider business community who can tap into its potential.”

Led by Ulster University’s School of Engineering, the installation of the new SIGFOX base station was supported by cross-border partners including VT Networks and 2nr. The base station equipment was provided by global operator WND Networks with installation expertise from Barrett Contracts.

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