WatchKeeper, the critical event management platform, has closed a £1 million funding round led by MMC and Venrex, adding to the £500,000 pre-seed funding they had already invested in the company in 2020. The funding will help the London-based startup, which only formally launched in March, build on its early success.
Founded by Hugh Farquhar, CEO and Daniel Whatmuff, CTO of WatchKeeper, it helps businesses manage critical events, pulling together information from internal and external sources to enable quick responses to what might be quickly changing situations. The platform allows informed decisions to be made to ensure the safety of staff and the business at times when others might be struggling to make sense of a confusing situation.
Managing complex situations
Hugh Farquhar, co-founder and CEO, created the company following a career at Citibank where he had regularly faced the challenges of everything from natural disasters to civil unrest. “We were in just over 100 countries, with 4,500 people travelling at any single time,” Farquhar explained. “When something went bang, trying to understand the risk to staff and business operations was challenging because the data was available, but in silos — like HR or international mobility — but when something happens on Christmas Day, you can’t wait for everyone to come back in the New Year.”
In 2015 Farquhar developed a system at Citibank which allowed him to get the information instantly, direct from the relevant systems, whenever they became aware of an issue. Having seen the benefits for Citibank over the next five years, he developed WatchKeeper as a solution for any business.
WatchKeeper works by pulling in information directly from internal and external sources, combining them to give complete and real-time situational awareness. Farquhar uses the example of a building fire, “previously you’d hear about it on the news, then you’d check with facilities to see if you had offices there, then HR to see what staff might be affected. WatchKeeper will alert you to the fire, and the risk to staff and premises, allowing crisis decision-makers to make decisions that could save lives, or millions in operational losses, quickly.”
WatchKeeper integrations to help keep staff and assets safe
WatchKeeper is licensed on a Software as a Service model. A client using WatchKeeper will be able to use it to integrate data from multiple internal platforms and combine that with data and updates from external services, giving them an instant and complete overview when issues arise. These integrations set them apart from their main competitors which tend to be tied to other products giving WatchKeeper an advantage in being able to work in any setting and with any relevant information sources.
WatchKeeper prides itself on being able to offer a bespoke service, “we have no conflicts of interest, we partner with market-leading risk vendors, but don’t promote any of them, so the client gets exactly what they need to suit their operation.”
WatchKeeper will also try to alert users to upcoming events. “We know there’s a hurricane season and can highlight key climatic conditions that affect it, or we can highlight key dates that are often associated with changes, like increased security around 911,” Farquhar explains.
Although he points out WatchKeeper is not a predictive model, “we aren’t like Minority Report, but we help create understanding about what events might occur, and what people should be preparing for, as well as helping them deal with events, predicted or not, when they occur.”
As the Covid-19 pandemic has highlighted, businesses often have to face challenges to their staff and make decisions rapidly to keep them safe, which has helped stimulate interest in WatchKeeper. Part of their attraction is that security is sector-agnostic. “We have clients and interest from financial services, retail, hospitality, entertainment and travel,” Farquhar’s list goes on, “as well as some of the largest tech firms, defence contractors, property management, auto manufacturing, oil and gas law enforcement agencies.”
Their latest funding will support WatchKeeper’s expansion. The team has recently quadrupled in size, creating more capacity to expand their product as well as their client base, which is currently largely US-based.
However, the $2.3 billion market is rapidly growing in response to a world that presents more risks, from the threats of climate change to the increased civil unrest in many parts of the world, and WatchKeeper is well-prepared to help businesses keep their staff safer despite those increased risks.
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