London, UK – Astuta Partners (Astuta) – an entrepreneur-led investment and advisory firm providing strategic counsel and operational support to technology companies – has once more demonstrated their commitment to partnering with new and innovative technologies with their recent investment in SPICA.
SPICA helps companies drive business efficiencies by utilising ‘connected devices solutions’. This fits neatly alongside Astuta’s own focus, to seek out and invest in technologies that can help solve the operational and customer challenges of businesses undergoing digital transformation.
SPICA has built DevicePoint, a generic IOT platform which can be used with a variety of sensors and business intelligence platforms to visualise measured data in real time. The initial utilisation of DevicePoint is to monitor the temperature performance of a building’s water system, helping organisations more effectively use temperature control to manage Legionella, an infection which can cause serious and potentially life-threatening health problems if it grows and spreads in the building’s water system.
DevicePoint provides an early warning system by constantly monitoring the temperatures of pipes carrying water throughout commercial and public buildings. Up to this point, such monitoring has been a very time-consuming manual exercise for building owners, operators, and facilities managers. As such this exercise hasn’t always been carried out as regularly or as accurately as it should be, delaying the detection of issues such as water temperatures that favour the growth of bacteria, lack of water movement in little-used outlets, and other risks and inefficiencies in the water system.
By automating monitoring processes, DevicePoint can save both time and money, as well as provide access to actionable insight via the reporting dashboard to capitalise on new operational and commercial propositions.
Astuta invests in businesses that have the transformational potential and know-how to solve known problems for clients. The company’s investment in SPICA acknowledges DevicePoint’s huge potential and an acute awareness that it is not limited solely to the monitoring of water. Indeed, trials of additional applications of DevicePoint are already underway and Astuta will explore further potential use cases with the company.
Founder and Managing Director of SPICA, Paul Collins expressed the organisation’s excitement about working with Astuta, commenting: “In addition to their investment in the business, they are bringing a vast amount of expertise and experience to bear, providing much valued support across a number of areas that will really accelerate our growth. Astuta are instrumental in helping us exploit synergies and partnership opportunities with some of the other Astuta businesses to add even more depth to our product portfolio which is fantastic news for our customers.
He added: “The Astuta team were incredibly supportive during the investment and due diligence process, working really closely with us to understand our goals and aspirations for the business and ensuring that the investment was founded on the principles of a solid business partnership.”
Howard Sears, Astuta’s Chairman, echoed Collins’ sentiment. He stated: “We are delighted to invest in SPICA. We have been really impressed by the innovative technologies and solutions SPICA are bringing to the market. The company’s proven management capabilities makes SPICA a potential future industry leader.”