Thingtrax, a London-based software-as-a-service manufacturing performance platform, has raised £4.3 million in a pre-Series A round. The funding will support Thingtrax as it develops strategic partnerships and grows its customer base across the US and Europe.
The round was co-led by Concentric, Superseed and Puma Private Equity, with additional investments from Haatch, Portfolio Ventures and Vinci Venture Capital. Several well-known angel investors also joined the round, including super angel Charlie Songhurst.
Growth driven by performance
Thingtrax supports manufacturing by capturing data that enables personnel at every level to improve efficiency. Founded in 2015 by Aman Gupta and Imran Shafqat, Thingtrax provided a platform that helped CEOs better visual the performance of their organisation’s processes. Now led by Paul Reader, the company’s growth resulted from the value it provided to customers.
“With limited resources, we have built a fantastic product and attracted prominent customers,” says Reader. Raising an initial $1 million in a 2020 seed round, Thingtrax has seen significant growth in subsequent years, building on 550% growth in 2021 with a further 230% growth in 2022. It has also secured several significant stamps of quality, including preferred partner status with Microsoft and official AI partners in the Edge Solution category for Intel.
As manufacturing operations become bigger and more complex, understanding their capacity, limits, and identifying improvements can quickly become impossible, Reader suggests that 94% of factories are looking for digital solutions that can provide leaders with a simple overview of performance.
Making intelligent manufacture hubs
Thingtrax provides a solution by integrating industrial IoT, AI, computer version, robotics, and cloud computing into a single platform. It can turn even seemingly traditional factories into intelligent manufacturing hubs.
However, Thingtrax goes further than simple data collection. Its power is in what it does with that data, and Reader says it, “provides leaders with in-depth analysis and actionable insights for improved efficiency and behaviour change across the workforce. We give manufacturers the tools and knowledge that they need to accelerate progress on their digitisation journey and the attainment of operational excellence.”
This has had an impressive real-world impact. Thingtrax cites the example of RGE, a plastic injection-moulding company who installed their vision system to monitor their factory floor. Thingtrax enabled them to reduce downtime by 70%, the improved efficiency, and the savings these produced, allowed the company to increase its team by 50%, increasing its capacity and strengthening its market position.
A key lever for other businesses
Thingtrax’s growth has been reflected in its team. The company is now sixty-strong, with personnel based in the UK, US and Pakistan. They have also recently made several strategic hires to provide leadership to support their growth.
As efficient operations become more important, Thingtrax is in a strong position. Alex Strong, Investor at Concentric, said, “we have a strong belief that the industrial technology space is at an inflexion point. In a high inflation, labour-scarce environment, industrial CEOs are realising that technology is one of the only levers left to optimise their P&L.”
The funding will be used by Thingtrax to continue their trajectory, consolidating and expanding their posting in key markets in the US and Europe, improving their product, and strengthening their key partnerships as they position themselves as the leading manufacturing performance platform.
