Scotland’s capital is obsessed with entrepreneurship and innovation as there are a lot of universities out there that churn out highly talented and fresh minds. With an abundance of expats and native entrepreneurs, the city of Edinburgh is undoubtedly a powerhouse of creativity and innovation.
What’s more interesting is that this city is known for its legacy of innovation as this is where the inventor of the telephone, Alexander Graham Bell belongs to. Right now, Edinburgh has a progressive tech ecosystem with a slew of fintech and healthtech startups among others.
It is also a notable city within the vicinity of investors and there are some prominent investors such as Pentech Ventures, Scottish Equity Partners, etc. that are based in the city. It is also home to CodeBase, one of the largest incubators supporting tech startups in the UK.
Having said that, the Scottish city of Edinburgh has many progressive tech startups that have gained attention across the world. Here we have listed some of these fast-growing tech startups and also some established brands in Edinburgh, as sourced from Dealroom.
Virgin Media
Founders: Richard Branson
Founded year: 2007
Why its hot: Virgin Media helps to create a digital world for consumers and communities. With its presence across the UK and Ireland, Virgin Media offers four multi award-winning services such as TV, mobile, broadband, and home phone. This company has been recognised year-after-year for providing the fastest widely available broadband speeds. It is investing to let millions of homes and businesses access the benefits of ultrafast fibre optic network.
FreeAgent
Founders: Ed Molyneux, Olly Headey, Roan Lavery
Funding: €3.9 million
Founded year: 2007
Why its hot: FreeAgent has developed an award-winning accounting software that helps over 90,000 SMEs manage their finances. Its platform offers a practice dashboard feature letting accountants and bookkeepers take care of their clients with just a glance. Back in 2018, FreeAgent was acquired by Royal Bank of Scotland Group, which gave it a boost. However, the company still remains independent in terms of operations.
Skyscanner
Founders: Barry Smith, Bonamy Grimes, Gareth Williams
Funding: €157 million
Founded year: 2003
Why its hot: Skyscanner is a global travel search site, which saves users time and money by finding the best travel options. The company offers free and unbiased travel options to over 70 million travellers across the world each month. It helps them find the best hotels, flights, and cars to hire. Skyscanner uses proprietary technology along with global reach connecting users to almost everything in the travel industry. Currently, there are over 800 employees across 10 global offices.
LendingCrowd
Founders: Stuart Lunn
Funding: €24.9m
Founded year: 2014
Why its hot: LendingCrowd is an award-winning fintech lending platform, which matches investors with SMEs. It is one of the pioneers in Scotland to offer such services and helps SMEs that find it tough to gain funds from banks and other traditional means. LendingCrowd provides an intuitive, efficient, and flexible financing solution for SMEs. Besides, investors also get risk-adjusted returns via a secure, convenient, and easy-to-use solution.
Reactec
Founders: Mark-Paul Buckingham
Funding: €800k
Founded year: 2001
Why its hot: Reactec is a spin-out from Edinburgh University, which was started as a vibration engineering consultancy. Reactec’s monitors are supported with an advanced cloud based analytics platform to allow the monitored data to support informed HAV (Hand Arm Vibration) exposure management processes. The Reactec Analytics Platform eliminates the necessity for paperwork by automating the entire process. With a few clicks, it is possible for employers to view both the individual and company-wide exposure trends.
FNZ
CEO: Adrian Durham
Funding: €2 million
Founded year: 2004
Why its hot: FNZ us a global fintech firm, which transforms the way financial institutions serve their customers. It teams up with banks, asset managers, and insurers to help customers achieve their financial goals better. Its technology, custody, and transaction services let clients provide best-in-class wealth management solutions to end-investors and financial advisers across the world. FNZ has teamed up with over 60 financial institutions across the world to offer its services.
TravelNest
Founders: Doug Stephenson
Funding: €3.6 million
Founded year: 2014
Why its hot: TravelNest is an advertising optimisation platform for holiday rental owners. Its product intelligently manages all the advertising made by the host with its central platform. TravelNest gathers data from sites and optimises the same to increase the revenue from rentals. There is an online dashboard to provide data on occupancy and property views.
Current Health (formerly Snap40)
Founders: Christopher McCann, Stewart Whiting
Funding: €10.9 million
Founded year: 2014
Why its hot: Current Health formerly known as Snap40 is a medtech company that comes up with wearable devices that enable healthcare practitioners to monitor patient information such as blood pressure, oxygen saturation, and vital signs. The platform offers integration with other devices and real-time equipment monitoring. This way, it enables automated collection of vital signs without any manual input.
PureLiFi
Founders: Harald Haas, Mostafa Afgani
Funding: €39.3 million
Founded year: 2012
Why its hot: PureLifi, a spin-out from the University of Edinburgh has developed an alternative to WiFi termed LiFi. It uses modulating LED light to send data from one LiFi-equipped device to another. LiFi technology is said to use the visible light spectrum instead of radio frequencies to deliver high-speed wireless data communication. In simple words, it uses LED light, which is pulsated so that it is not visible to the human eye, to send data wirelessly. PureLiFi already works with the likes of Lucibel and Cisco to provide LiFi networks.
The ID Co.
Founders: James Varga
Funding: €9.9 million
Founded year: 2010
Why its hot: The ID Co. has been building products depending on bank data. It creates convenience for consumers and helps businesses such as online lenders easily onboard customers by resolving pain-points such as credit risk. The DirectID business products help achieve this by eliminating friction caused in the process by current challenges of compliance, risk, fraud, and regulation.
Stock photo from f11photo/Shutterstock
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