Sheffield-founded commercial-academic matchmaking platform IN-PART has landed £950,000 in a funding round from the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund, which poured £750,000, and two unnamed private investors.
IN-PART, which employs 28 people across two offices in Sheffield and London, plans to use the capital injection to expand its team. As part of the deal, Thomas Jørgensen, co-founder of university software platform Pure, which was sold to Elsevier in 2012, will join the board as chairman.
The startup's “smart” matchmaking platform can alert R&D teams in the industry about relevant innovations developed in academia. If the R&D team is interested, IN-PART facilitates the initial introduction.
IN-PART said that it has initiated more than 5,000 new interactions between academic researchers and industry teams since 2014 but didn't disclose how many of them have led to a fruitful collaboration. It also mentioned that the platform currently lists more than 220 universities and research institutions, as well as R&D teams in over 5,500 companies across the world.
Image credit: José Alejandro Cuffia on Unsplash
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