Kajeka prepares for commercialisation

Kajeka's first product Miru (the Japanese verb 'to see') is targeted at the bioscience market and is a powerful tool for the visualisation and analysis of network graphs derived from big data. 

The company is based at Roslin Innovation Centre and was a spin-out from the University of Edinburgh. 

A SMART grant was awarded to assess and develop further applications, with the project completed earlier this year.  An outcome of the SMART grant is a second product, Graphia, which provides the business with a solution that will scale beyond individual analysts.  The new product which can be used in markets far wider than bioinformatics will be distributed to selected customers and prospects over the next few months including users in the bioinformatics, financial and law enforcement sectors.

In May three new Directors joined Kajeka to help progress its commercialisation.  Les Gaw, who took Essential Viewing Systems to a £4.9m trade sale in 2011, has joined as CEO; Paul Chowdry, spent 15 years with Wood MacKenzie, latterly as Global Head of Research, joined as Chairman; and Professor David Hume, former Director of The Roslin Institute, joined as a non-executive Director.

The company has raised an investment of £220k, from the new Directors and a further business angel, together with Old College Capital and Ark Genomics.  

Les Gaw comments that this funding round has given the company sufficient runway to develop a clear commercialisation model, introduce the new product to target markets, clean up the share capital table and prepare for a larger investment round in 2018.

Source:  Young Company Finance, Issue 222