Panoramic Growth Equity (“Panoramic”), a leading equity investor in fast growing, entrepreneurial UK companies, today announced that it has invested £750,000 of growth capital in technology company Edesix, which was founded by a group of serial British technology entrepreneurs.

Panoramic will take a minority stake in the company and Panoramic partner David Wilson will join the board. This is the seventh investment for Panoramic’s Enterprise Capital Fund I, which held its final close in September 2010 and was oversubscribed at £34 million; and the fourth investment made by Panoramic in the last twelve months.

Edesix designs and manufactures secure hi-tech video recording equipment for security use, law enforcement and the protection of lone workers. Its customers include Police Scotland, Cambridgeshire Police and G4S, with additional regional police forces across the UK currently trialling Edesix’s body worn video equipment. The company also retails its products and services to public sector and private companies that operate in parking enforcement and to location based lone workers from the retail, transport, cleaning and debt collection industries.

Panoramic’s investment will enable Edesix to increase its reach through enhanced sales and marketing in key markets and geographies around the world. The company has already developed a significant amount of intellectual property and this injection of capital will help it to further develop the functionality of its products, in tandem with the rollout of 4G mobile networks.

Based in Edinburgh, the founders previously worked together at computer networking pioneer Spider Systems, which was acquired by Shiva Corporation in 1995. CEO Richie McBride and CTO Robin Iddon then founded Axon Networks, which was sold to 3Com for $65 million in 1996, before establishing Edesix in 2002.

Co-founder and CEO Richie McBride said: “Our ambition is to become the market leader in secure body-worn video devices worldwide. Our focus on encryption of personal video data and scalable storage architecture will allow large scale deployments to customers worldwide. We are seeing significant demand in both the UK and overseas markets. The investment from Panoramic will enable us to deliver the next generation of hosted data management services and connected devices to our customers. Panoramic’s investment will help us to take full advantage of these many opportunities and move closer to realising our long-term ambitions.”

“It is the first time that Edesix has taken on external investment and we looked at a variety of possible options. We were seeking an experienced, professional investor who would work closely alongside us. We also share some common ground in that Panoramic team are business owners themselves. They have an established track record of helping smaller entrepreneurial businesses to build larger more profitable enterprises; we are already seeing the benefits that they bring via a strong network of contacts.”

David Wilson of Panoramic Growth Equity who joins the Edesix board, said:

“Edesix is a great example of a young, technologically advanced business which has tapped into a nascent market with enormous growth potential. The founding team spotted this opportunity and have been able to draw on many years of technology and engineering experience to build a business that is now a leader in its space. We in turn bring to the table experience of having worked with over thirty small businesses with revenues of £1m-£10m, often helping them internationalise.

“The team at Edesix has a great track record of having built and sold businesses in the past and we look forward to working with them to create another success story for British technology.”