Capital for Enterprise Fund makes first investments

The government’s Capital for Enterprise (CfE) Fund has made its first two investments, in systems integrator KeTech and enterprise software company Vamosa.

The lion’s share of the £75 million fund has been allocated to investment firms Octopus Ventures and Maven Capital Partners, each of which is managing £30 million. Octopus invested £2 million in KeTech while Maven backed Vamosa with £1 million.

KeTech, which provides communications software and services to the rail industry, also raised £2.5 million from invoice discounter Centric Commercial Finance in conjunction with the CfE Fund’s investment. CEO John Kearney says he wrote to business secretary Peter Mandelson (pictured) in March about the company’s difficulty in securing finance.

Adds Kearney, ‘This [funding] will play a critical role in enabling us to secure profitable new contracts which, regrettably, until now we have been forced to turn away.’

Glasgow-based Vamosa, which specialises in content management, will use the CfE funding to seek new business among large organisations and governments around the world. The company has recently launched a product that automatically locates and repairs errors in websites’ content management systems.

The CfE Fund was announced in January with the intention of helping thriving businesses struggling to secure finance because of the credit crunch.