Maven leads £2.1 million funding round in Oak | NEDCF Maven

Oak Intranet has secured a £2.1 million additional seed funding round led by Maven Capital Partners. The funding follows a restructure of the company’s leadership team led by the new CEO, Will Murray and the appointment of a new non-executive chairman, Mark Quartermaine which will enable the business to expand adoption across the UK.

Created in 2016 Oak Intranet is aimed at enterprise and medium sized businesses, it organises departments, news, teams, projects and internal communication through its mobile app and SaaS platform. This makes it perfect for large organisations that may have multiple locations and deskless workers. Users of Oak see employee engagement levels of 90% or higher when adopting the company’s deployment methodology.

The funding coincides with several other exciting developments including a move to a new Newcastle City Centre office at Generator Studios.

Since its launch, Oak has been adopted by a range of industry leading organisations, such as Aldi, Halfords, ITV, REISS and River Island. Oak is a secure, cloud-based, digital workplace for internal communication and employee engagement. Oak’s Software as a Service solution is used by hundreds of thousands of people every day across multiple sectors.

The transaction comprises £950,000 from the North East Development Capital Fund, supported by the European Regional Development Fund and £600,000 from the Finance Durham Fund, established by Durham County Council and overseen by Business Durham, both regional funds are managed by Maven Capital Partners. £450,000 was invested from the North East Innovation Fund, supported by the European Regional Development Fund and managed by Northstar Ventures, and a further £100,000 was invested by a private investor.

Will Murray, CEO at Oak, added: “Oak is an amazing product with tremendous potential. It enables organisations to engage their employees including deskless workers and provides a range of internal communications tools that integrate seamlessly with office applications. We are thankful for the great funding partners we have in Maven, NorthStar Ventures and Finance Durham and look forward to working with them as Oak scales”

Michael Vassallo, Investment Director at Maven, said: “Oak are pioneers in developing and selling intranet solutions, the platform addresses a large and growing market focused on the digital workplace. We are delighted to lead the latest funding round to continue to support the roll-out of its innovative cloud-based software and enable the business to execute a number of exciting new developments.”