UK-Based Big Data Analyst Secures Growth Funds

In the UK, big data and sentiment analysis specialist Digital Contact has raised £2.4m ($3.8m) in investment funding, which it says will be used to increase the efficiency of its analytics engine.

Launched in 2012 by Gareth Mann and Leif Harstad, Rochester, Kent-based Digital Contact's platform captures and curates information gathered from social media, blogs, and news sites across any sector. The system is then able to analyse sentiment and relevancy, as well as influential weighting signals such as people, events and places. Its Insights Engine then distils the resulting data into indicators, patterns, trends and predictive metrics, and can currently process more than 250,000 messages per second.

While the company did not disclose where its latest round of funding has come from, it did say in a statement that since launching it has gained support and funding from Adrian Ware, CEO of Cavendish Ware; John Maltby, CEO of Williams & Glyn; and Dave Wallace, CEO for HealthWallace Ltd - part of WPP Group.

Mann (pictured) comments: 'This funding is a huge boost, and will go a long way to cementing our position as a leader in big data products and services. As a first step, it's allowed us to invest in leading technology, processing billions of messages each day. We're now in a position to move forward with our solution, to refine and improve our offering and translate the mass of information out there into something tangible that businesses can work with'.

Web site: www.digitalcontact.co.uk .