Stortext Ltd secures second round funding

Investee Company – Stortext Ltd (UK)

Investee Company Business – Provides virtual document management services

Type of Financing – Expansion

Equity Providers – Royal Bank Ventures (RBV), Albany Ventures, BancBoston Capital, Trivest VCT, Scottish Equity Partners

Equity Leader (Individual) – Bill Troup (RBV)

Debt Providers – NA

Debt Type – NA

Debt Leader (Individual) – NA

Equity Amount – £3.8 million

Total Deal Value – £3.8 million

Other Advisors – LICA (advised Trivest VCT)

Comments – Edinburgh-based Stortext Ltd, a virtual document management company, has raised £3.8 million in a second round of funding.

The deal was led by Royal Bank Ventures (RBV), the technology venture capital arm of The Royal Bank of Scotland. RBV was joined by existing investors: US-based BancBoston Capital, London-based Trivest VCT, Scottish Equity Partners of Glasgow and first-time investor, Albany Ventures of Edinburgh. A £5 million first round in October 2000 was also led by RBV.

Stortext intends to use the capital to invest in R&D, expand its sales and marketing divisions and construct new premises in Dunstable.

Founded in 1985, Stortext provides a range of services under the Doxzone name including: paper, film or fiche to digital conversion, digital document storage, search and retrieval, Internet and Intranet, direct dial-in or VPN options, data manipulation, mass customisation, outsourced and personalised print services. Customers include: Abbey National, Consignia, The Environmental Agency, McDonalds and Orange.

Bill Troup, managing director of RBV, said: “Stortext has an exciting future as the ‘pay as you go’ pricing model is accepted as standard within the document management arena, and as the digital storage and outsourcing markets experience rapid growth.” He added that the company is “well positioned to exploit the strong growth opportunities in electronic document management.”