Public Funding for Pelucid Limited

SME marketers rely on manual time-consuming, expensive, risky and extremely inefficient processes including basic research, broad estimations and cold-calling. SME marketers must replicate the multi-channel, tailored ABM tactics of their Enterprise marketing colleagues, which rely on making content highly-relevant to the audience. In 2021, B2B digital advertising was a £138.8Bn global opportunity, growing 8% CAGR to £257Bn by 2029\. DART will develop disruptive innovations using AI and ML to support SMEs and marketers. DART will conduct Industrial Research to prove the platform's concept. GI's team have the necessary skills/experience to manage and complete this project successfully on-time and on-budget. However, DART's innovation and ambition makes the project technically and commercially risky. DART will allow GI to develop a new source of revenue with potential for significant return on investment. Positive economic impact, growth and scale-up. DART has been carefully planned for maximum innovation, commercial potential, UK-wide impacts and UK value-for-money. DART provides significant RoI to the UK.

Vision Following the success of AIMIE (Automated International Market Intelligence Export), developed under IUK Grant (103641), the vision of SPRINT is to provide UK SME's with a low-cost entry to international markets via a digitally enabled global business network. SPRINT Key Objectives Furthering our IP to allow SME's to connect with international prospects digitally. This allows SMEs to target specific international audiences and be laser focused in their sales/exports. Digital routes-to-market are especially relevant as SMEs have been forced to adapt operating models due to COVID-19. Commercialisation of IP to generate significant revenues by providing SME's a platform to market to specific named customers (vs. current alternative of ads to non-targeted groups). This would deliver a highly cost effective mechanism for SME's to scale internationally. Focus UK focused, conducting R&D in the UK with a robust business plan to scale-up and deliver rapid growth. Innovations Creation of the Global Business Network AI (GBN AI) - mapping the footprint of businesses and their global presence (sales offices, distribution, headquarters) - the entry point for SMEs will be their prospect's UK office. Creation of the Global Digital Identity Link AI (GDIL AI) - linking business entities to their online identity using AI, NLP and geo-data-science. Development of sector based targeting-models - removing the need to build a custom AI for every SME client - thus reducing time/resources/costs, increasing our addressable market to millions of SME's at an affordable price-point. Productisation of Fit, Value and Trading AI (Phoenix IUK #62126) will allow GI to identify highly targeted opportunities internationally, be able to determine first year value of those opportunities allowing SME to allocate marketing channels efficiently, and be able to identify their trading status throughout the Covid-19 Pandemic. Deliver an affordable offering to SME's - most SME's have limited international sales and marketing budgets. SPRINT will develop an innovative low-risk commercial model (Lead-Generation-as-a-Service: LGaaS) in partnership with professional call-centres and digital marketers.

**Project Vision** - To scale nationally and internationally SMEs and large businesses must identify and market their products and services to new customers ("prospects"). However, understanding unknown prospects in any region is expensive, inefficient and risky (especially considering COVID-19). Processes (identifying prospects, understanding prospect value, targeting, marketing and understanding internal knowledge) are complex and challenging, even for large enterprises and especially for SMEs, resulting in just 9.8% UK SMEs exporting (FSB, 2018). Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) have the potential to revolutionise the process of scaling businesses to new markets and export. With Innovate UK support, Growth Intelligence has developed a platform allowing UK businesses to identify any UK-registered company that is likely to buy their product/service. To expand internationally, SPARK must radically innovate the platform with advanced AI/ML to predict both SMEs' and large enterprises' most suitable worldwide prospects and marketing channels for maximum return-on-investment (RoI). **Key Objectives -** Industrial Research to develop and validate a platform that SMEs and large enterprises can use to quickly and accurately identify and target prospects.

Phoenix is a novel innovation that will allow our systems to predict the operational status of any UK company. UK companies have adopted many different strategies to cope with the Covid-19 pandemic. In order to restart the B2B economy efficiently businesses need to ensure that their marketing and outreach is targeted to those companies that are active throughout the pandemic and those who restart operations over the months and years following the lifting of the lockdown. In addition to the commercial application of the innovation, Phoenix will be able to provide a real time barometer for the UK Corporate Economy by identifying when individual companies and micro sub-segments of the economy reopen and the degree to which they have opened at any one time. At this granular level we will be able to identify this by geography, industry sector, any set or subset.

Starting to export for the first time to a new market comes with fear, uncertainty and doubt. Knitting together traditional market datasets using traditional ‘structured-data’ technology is next to impossible. Growth Intelligence understands this well and is passionate to develop novel technology that will allow businesses, particularly SMEs, a holistic view of global demand in a fast & cost-effective way. This project’s Automated International MI Engine (AIMIE) will provide the first real-time view of international demand, tailored specifically at the SME using the service. A visual dashboard will give UK SMEs accurate, timely, affordable MI to exploit new global markets. AIMIE will be the fastest and most cost efficient solution and generate real-time, client-specific market insights; a novel improvement on current state-of-art. AIMIE will be a one-stop-shop for international MI, enabling clients to do highly effective targeted marketing and maximise their marketing RoI. AIMIE will position GI ahead of the competition. With the uncertainty surrounding Brexit, AIMIE will enable UK companies to rapidly identify and strategically develop new international markets confidently.

* Problem: 50% of UK turnover produced by private companies (ONS October 2011), encouraging the growth of small companies is a primary government objective. But investors, lenders, insurers and even government departments find it extremely hard to engage with private companies due to the lack of good data (SIC codes are one-dimensional, old-fashioned and full of errors, Companies House records are on average 16 months old). Government, Banks and Corporate Investors are struggling to make informed decisions about growth support, lending and investment. * Solution: Growth Intelligence (GI) from Pelucid tracks the performance and activity of all 3m companies in the economy in real-time using their constantly changing ‘digital fingerprint’. This has never been possible before. Pelucid proved concept of GI as a sales and investment tool in 2012 with the support of the TSB. Potential customers now require solid evidence of GI’s revenue estimation accuracy, before they can use it in lending and targeting businesses. * How project will address problems: DIG will develop a pre-production prototype of its GI tool and the mathematical accuracy will be assessed by an Oxford University mathematician and experienced KPMG analyst. The GI tool will be valuable for FS firms and the public sector reducing the risk of SME investment, insurance and lending. More accurate targeting of support for growth companies will foster job creation across the UK.

The UK is overstocked with innovative high-growth companies but closure of the Regional Development Agencies (RDAs) and changes to reporting obligations under the Companies Act leave UK government and Corporate Investors struggling to identify high-growth companies and direct support for growth. This project will prove the concept of a tool to identify high-growth companies based on realtime open-source intelligence and known revenues. The tool will combine structured and unstructured data from the web to identify the fastest-growing companies in any given sector or region. The tool will be valuable for private equity firms and the public sector to direct support and foster job creation.

Awaiting Public Summary