Case Study: iAM- Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund
Funds will allow them to leverage existing products
Cheshire based iAM Compliant Limited has received £1m funding from NPIF – Maven Equity Finance, managed by Maven Capital Partners and part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund.
The investment will be used to accelerate the build out of the iAM learning library, a cloud-based content as a service that provides a range of eLearning topics and offers bespoke content build for larger international eLearning businesses.
The company, which spearheads a safety management, premises and compliance online tool, alongside a characterful and disruptive animated online elearning library, has seen strong growth since formally launching to the market in 2019.
The compliance tool is widely used in the education sector and provides a complete solution for health, safety, compliance and premises needs. A fully loaded training library is also included, which is widely used by a variety of corporate customers including DPD Group, Interserve, Dreams, Countrywide Group and Mountain Warehouse. The company has been nominated for Learning Start-up of the Year by the Learning Performance Institute in 2021.
The emergence of cost-effective e-learning training modules is a major driver of the global corporate training market, currently worth $200bn in size. Corporate training is increasingly seen as a key expense of any organisation, with lifelong learning becoming more important as career structures change and technology evolves. The market is expected to grow c.10% by 2022 as more organisations convert from traditional training methods to giving employees access to the digital content.
Luke Pargeter, CEO and Founder of iAM Compliant commented: “This investment couldn’t have come at a better time for us. Our brands of iAM Compliant and iAM Learning are gaining real brand traction and are already enjoying global recognition. These funds will allow us to leverage our existing products and scale them, with a predicted focus on additional online compliance app functionality and even more stellar content covering a wide range of topics from mental health to soft skills and everything in between. We are truly excited to work within this partnership vehicle.”
Tom Gagen, Chief of Design added: “We have some big ideas for our content roadmap, and we expect to add at least 150 titles to our existing library in 2021. The investment will allow us to bring these to market quicker, whilst maintaining the high quality visuals, engaging animation and character driven content we have already become famous for delivering.”
Tom Moore, COO and Co-Founder, summarised by commenting: “Working through the investment process has already made our business stronger and we’re confident that the plans we have jointly agreed will really unlock our potential. It’s safe to say we’re ready to really ramp up our brands and help our customers meet the demands of their business training, health, safety and compliance needs. The investment will be immediately put to work, scaling up our content production line, securing the support of industry experts (in L&D and Health & Safety) and putting in place the infrastructure we need – in sales, marketing and account management – to see us quickly move forwards on our rapid revenue growth curve.”
James Rosthorn, Investment Manager at Maven Capital Partners commented: “We are delighted to support the management team as they look to accelerate their international expansion and implement their ambitious business plan. There is significant potential for the iAM Compliant brand to disrupt the education market and beyond, and for the iAM Learning brand to gain global recognition through its outstanding online elearning library.”
Sue Barnard at British Business Bank said: “iAM Compliant is an innovative business that has grown significantly in its first two years of trading and already boasts a strong portfolio of high-profile clients. Ensuring these kinds of Northern businesses have access to finance and the means to grow will prove crucial as the UK looks to recover, and NPIF will continue to provide support in any way it can.”