BGF hits ‘Purple’ patch with £10.5m investment

The WiFi and location analytics platform Purple, based in the North West, has announced a £10.5 million investment from BGF.

Purple was founded in 2012 by Gavin Wheeldon, out of frustration for poor guest Wi-Fi connections, and has now evolved into a powerful tool for businesses to turn their physical venues into intelligent spaces. Purple has two core offerings: a cloud-based guest WiFi access portal, providing detailed business analytics; and digital wayfinding solutions, following the acquisition of US wayfinding business LogicJunction in 2019.

The investment from BGF will support Purple as it continues its growth trajectory globally and further develops its product offering. This includes its recently launched asset tracking platform, which enables customers to monitor, track, and precisely locate key assets live on an interactive map and, through integration with wayfinding, can alert the client if an asset leaves a pre-set area.

Headquartered in Manchester, Purple has more than 1,000 customers worldwide, including blue-chip corporates and SMEs across a wide range of markets, such as hospitality, retail, government, healthcare, banking, and transport.

Commenting on the deal, Gavin Wheeldon, CEO at Purple, said: “Customer experience has become a key driver across a multitude of sectors in recent years which, in turn, has sparked a wave of digitalisation, in order to meet the needs and expectations of end users. The rise in indoor location services has rocketed, providing us with the perfect platform to grow our core product offerings.”

“In order to realise our future ambitions, we wanted to partner with a minority investor that was willing to join us on our growth journey by taking a long-term approach to their investment. In BGF, we have found that partner. ”

The deal was led by Pinesh Mehta and Courtney Walker, investors in BGF’s Manchester team.

BGF investor Pinesh Mehta said: “Purple is a highly impressive and fast-growth business that has tapped into a market that is ripe for growth – both domestically and internationally. The team’s appetite for continuous product development perfectly positions them to capitalise on the rise in demand for consumer data and insights, with the entire indoor location services market expected to grow exponentially over the next decade. We’re delighted to be working alongside a hugely ambitious and talented team, helping them to reach their full potential in what is a dynamic and innovative marketplace.”

Advisors to BGF on the transaction were:

• Legal – DLA (Andrew Phillips and Alexandra Keane)
• Tax – Hurst (Adrian Young, Sarah Haley and Sam Ryan)
• ESG – Apex
• Financial Due Diligence – Paul Bosson
• Cyber Due Diligence – SureCloud
• Commercial Due Diligence – Dean Bubley

Advisors to Purple were:

• Corporate Finance – GP Bullhound (Javed Huq, Evgeny Yakovlev and Zeeshan Ali)
• Legal – Hill Dickinson (James Down, James Redshaw and Abigail Hill)
• Tax – PwC (Dan Harris and Gill Pooler)