New Investment in Getvisibility

RNS Number : 5152F

Sure Ventures PLC

10 March 2020

 

SURE VENTURES PLC / ISIN: GB00BYWYZ460 / Ticker: SURE / Market: SFS / Sector: Investment

10 March 2020

Sure Ventures plc ('Sure Ventures' or 'the Company')

New Investment in Getvisibility, an AI Security Company

Sure Ventures plc, a London listed venture capital fund that invests in early stage software companies across a range of high-tech verticals, is pleased to announce that Sure Valley Ventures ('Sure Valley'), in which it holds a circa 25.9% interest, is leading a €1,250,000 investment round in Getvisibility, an AI security company.   

Overview

· Sure Valley has invested €750,000 in Getvisibility as part of €1,250,000 investment round

· Proprietary software that leverages AI to discover, classify and protect critical data

· Notable blue-chip client base and strong pipeline of new business opportunities

· Capital raised will be used to accelerate international go to market initiatives.

Sure Valley CIO, Barry Downes, said, "Getvisibility's software leverages AI to discover, classify and protect critical data.  With a world-class team, proprietary technology and given its total addressable market is $4 billion today, Getvisibility's opportunity is vast.  It already has an impressive list of blue-chip clients across various sectors including oil & gas, finance and healthcare, and is growing rapidly.  We look forward to supporting the company on its exciting journey as it scales global sales."

Getvisibility CEO & Founder, Ronan Murphy, said, "Given our global ambition to build a business with international scale and further strengthen our blue-chip client base, we are delighted with this investment.  We are particularly pleased to have the support of notable investors, which have track records recognising and investing in other successful high-tech companies."

Details

Cork, Ireland based Getvisibility provides an enterprise security product that helps organisations manage the 80% of their data that is unstructured, i.e. Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Pdf, versus the other 20% being data in databases.  In doing so, Getvisibility helps organisations gain control over unstructured data, categorise it and make it organised, protectable, migrated to the cloud and searchable.  In essence, the software enables companies to quickly visualise their data footprint, where new and changing data risks have surfaced thus allowing for proactive data management and security.

Getvisibility's technology utilises the latest in Deep Learning AI, a lightweight enterprise architecture that provides fast and accurate visibility of all the data within the clients' environment.  Notably, it removes the need for large teams of people to try and deal with this problem manually and eliminates the need for legacy tech that attempts to tackle this problem using regex or dictionary look up.  Getvisibility's highly scalable AI models are adapted for specific data structures on a per industry basis and can process and understand unstructured information as it is being created.

Having launched its software in 2018, Getvisibility already boasts an impressive international blue-chip client base including leading insurance, healthcare, data provision and accountancy businesses such as Ireland's largest healthcare provider, Laya Healthcare, and FBD Insurance plc.  It also has a strong pipeline of advanced diverse new opportunities.  Accordingly, to help scale its global sales, Getvisibility has raised €1,250,000 in an investment round led by Sure Valley Ventures, which has invested €750,000, and which includes other investors such as AIM listed Pires Investments PLC. 

Post the investment, Getvisibility is strengthening its board with the appointments of Sure Valley Ventures Partner, Brian Kinane, and software industry veteran Ferras Zalt.

Mr. Zalt has held positions at the NASA Space Agency, and Compaq Computer Corp. in the USA. In 1995, he founded SoftTech, an IT consultancy business with a focus on the energy sector to capitalise on the need for specialist IT technical services particularly in the Oil and Gas sector. SoftTech grew rapidly and went on to deliver the largest SAP installation in the world at the time for Saudi Aramco. In 2001, Mr. Zalt sold the company to Atos Origin achieving several fold returns on invested capital and remained on as CEO to drive the business to further success. In 2005, as a result of a global repositioning strategy, Mr. Zalt had the opportunity to lead a management buyout of the company and within two years sold the company to Hewlett Packard, achieving significant returns to investors. In 2010, he led an investment management buyout in Gulf Energy, an Oil and Gas full-service company; in three years, he sold the investment achieving healthy returns. More recently, in 2019 Mr. Zalt took up a position of Executive Chairman of TSX listed Elixxer Ltd. 

Mr. Kinane is an experienced industry software technology entrepreneur and investment manager with extensive corporate technology experience including product management roles at global telecom companies such as Ericsson Group and Telenor Group and executive roles at venture capital-backed technology start-ups.  Mr. Kinane has had a successful track record as an alternative investment manager, having funded over 100 companies and achieving attractive returns for fund investors.

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For further information, please visit https://surevalleyventures.com/ or contact:

Gareth Burchell	Sure Ventures	[phone]
Isabel de Salis	St Brides Partners (Financial PR)	[phone]
Susan Brennan	Getvisibility	[phone]

Notes to Editors

Sure Ventures plc listed on the London Stock Exchange in January 2018 to give retail investors access to an asset class that is usually dominated by private venture capital funds. The Company aims to provide investors with a diversified exposure to three rapidly growing markets: augmented reality/virtual reality, fintech and Internet of Things.  Sure Ventures is focusing on companies in the UK, Republic of Ireland and other European countries, making seed and series A investments in companies with first rate management teams, products which benefit from market validation with target revenue run rates of at least £400,000 over the next 12 months. 

 

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