Digital archiving platform Arkivum raising new funding
Digital archiving platform Arkivum is raising a new round of growth equity through the private equity investment firm Growthdeck as it seeks to help businesses preserve their data for the future, solving the growing problem of loss of valuable data through obsolescence and corruption.
Arkivum is a cloud-based secure digital archiving and preservation platform that allows businesses in highly-regulated industries to safeguard, use, read and audit their data for decades into the future.
Arkivum’s platform integrates with cloud-based platforms such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure, and allows businesses to preserve these valuable digital assets into the future, protecting them from loss, corruption and hardware failure. Arkivum also guarantees that the data will be readable and usable in the future.
Arkivum is currently partnering with Google to deliver the €4.8m ARCHIVER data archiving project for a multinational group of scientific research institutions, led by CERN, which operates the Large Hadron Collider in Geneva. The project will archive and protect extremely large-scale research data, measured in petabytes (units of one million gigabytes).
Tech consultancy Forrester has described the lack of data archiving as a ‘ticking time bomb’ for businesses, as even archived data can be permanently lost in malware incidents if there is a lack of backups.
Key problems faced by data-led businesses include:
- Data being stored in outdated formats or only being readable on obsolete applications
- Data stored on physical media (e.g. hard drives) that can degrade and suffer catastrophic failure
- Data stored with cloud storage providers that may discontinue services
These incidents can cause large-scale loss of data that has significant long-term value and can create huge potential costs for businesses should it need to be reproduced.
A leader in the pharma sector – and still growing
Arkivum has already established itself as the clear market leader for data archiving in the pharmaceutical sector, where regulators such as the European Medicines Agency require businesses to maintain data on clinical trials for 25 years. In some cases they can be required to make this data available for audit at any point during the full lifetime of an approved drug, with penalties including fines and halts to research for businesses that lose this data.
Arkivum is continuing to rapidly grow and convert its pipeline of clients in the pharmaceutical sector. Arkivum works on a subscription model, giving the business stable and recurring revenues.
Growthdeck is leading a total funding round for Arkivum of circa £1.6m, of which £1.1m will be provided by Growthdeck. Existing investors, including VC funds, will provide another £500,000. The funds will be used to grow Arkivum’s business development and sales function and accelerate its product development.
Shaz Hussain, investment director at Growthdeck, comments: “This is an excellent opportunity for us to back a business that solves a critically-important and growing problem for data-led businesses – how to make sure that data is preserved for decades into the future.”
“Businesses cannot rely on the hardware or software that they use in-house to store their data in the future. Systems change, standards change and that means data gets lost. Arkivum has established itself as the key provider to the pharma sector based on its solution outperforming anything else on the market.”
“What’s particularly exciting is that Arkivum has barely scratched the surface of its growth possibilities. We’re looking forward to seeing it grow in the coming years.”
Growthdeck’s equity investment in Arkivum qualifies for tax reliefs under the Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS). EIS is an investment scheme which allows private investors to make tax savings by investing in growth businesses. The EIS allows investors to:
- Invest up to £1m per annum
- Reclaim 30% of the cost of investment against their income tax bill
- To not pay Capital Gains Tax (CGT) on any gains realised after three years
- Claim further income tax relief should an investment result in any form of loss
- Defer capital gains tax due on the sale of another asset by re-investing the gain in an EIS-qualifying company
- Save inheritance tax on any EIS-qualifying shares held for over two years