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Tom Bailey and Tom Komar of Streets Systems with Mike Guellard of NEL Fund Managers.

Tech scaleup on the right track to growth with five-figure investment

A North East technology firm has secured a five-figure investment to accelerate its scaleup plans.

Streets Systems, which gathers data to analyse the movements of people and traffic in the built environment, has received a £25k investment from the North East Small Loan Fund, supported by the European Regional Development Fund.

Set up by Tom Bailey and Tom Komar, the Newcastle-based firm has worked with The City of London Corporation as well as maintaining permanent footfall monitoring equipment on Northumberland Street for Newcastle University’s Urban Observatory.

Streets Systems co-founder Tom Bailey explained: “Our people and traffic sensors can accurately track the movements of pedestrians and cyclists, as well as the speed and volume of motor traffic, and allow us to collect constant real time data 24/7, something which would be pretty much impossible for human observers to do in busy environments.

Having worked with regional fund management firm NEL Fund Managers to secure the investment, Street Systems plans to use the funds to scale up operations.

With plans to grow its workforce and client base, the firm aims to increase its annual turnover to £250k by the end of 2020.

Tom continued: “The projects that we’ve undertaken so far have shown how effective this approach can be in improving the urban environments that we all use, and increasing our capacity to take on more and bigger projects by bringing in this new equipment will help us grow the business quickly over the next couple of years.

“The Small Loan Fund provided the right financial option for the type of equipment acquisition we were looking to do, and working with the NEL team to bring in the investment was a smooth and positive process.”

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