Dear , 

Founded in early 2013, Cytora has built an event detection technology that detects factual, real world events in unstructured text. The technology can be flexibly scaled and directed to cover all major event categories. At a fundamental level, Cytora are using the web to observe the world and alert organisations to changes in their risk exposure – across different sectors - in an automated way.

Delivering factual event information to companies derived from unstructured web text enables organisations to reach mission-critical information directly from the web with event detection technology, without the need for data providers and consultants.

Cytora have successfully tested and monetised the product across multiple industries, including insurance, investment, supply chain and the airline industry.

The Opportunity
Organisations increasingly require hyper-local information about risk events and their impact in real time e.g. - port closures (supply chain), pipeline explosions (commodities trading), commercial building fires (insurance). Current approaches to acquire this information are human intensive and incapable of capturing the volume, velocity and relevance of risk information contained in unstructured text. Cytora’s data driven approach enables information to be captured faster, at higher volume, on a more distributed basis and serves as a proprietary foundation for machine learning at scale.

The Technology
By ingesting large volumes of unstructured text on a continuous basis, Cytora discovers risk events in their earliest instance. The company’s event detection technology uses algorithmic tools (based on Natural Language Processing and Machine Learning) to exploit web-based unstructured information. The data is analysed and delivered to a web platform or API.

The business then provides the client with a combination of event reports in real time and comprehensive historical databases of such events enriched with various attributes. This information can then be interrogated, either by the client or by Cytora, to deliver actionable conclusions.

Cytora’s IP consists of copyright in the software and know-how.

The Market
Cytora has undertaken a thorough review and narrowed its focus for the nearer term on 2 main markets but is likely to choose one of these for final development and a full commercial launch this year:

• Insurance (risk quantification, selection and pricing) - $billion market
• Asset Management (quantitative asset management, trading) - $billion market

Other potential markets, such as supply chain management, are still of significant interest and may be developed subsequently.

The Model
The company has developed two product types and potential revenue streams

• Information Discovery – capturing events that relate to exposure in real time
• Historical Dataset – compiling comprehensive datasets of events and connecting them to wider sector, financial and location based attributes

Cytora also has the capability of modelling the impact of events on assets, which may be offered to clients as an additional service subsequently.

Revenue has already been generated through Proof of Concept assignments with a number of high profile customers including Schroders, Verisk Analytics, QinetiQ and Willis. The model should migrate to recurring license agreements as finalised products are rolled out.

The Team

Aeneas Wiener, CTO (previously PhD Theoretical Physics at Imperial College)

Richard Hartley, CEO (Product Manager at eBaoTech)

Joshua Wallace, Chief Business Officer (Consultant at Cognizant)

Andrzej Czapiewski, Chief Revenue Officer (Consultant at World Bank)

Richard Gibson, Chairman designate (previously Chairman and CFO at SwiftKey)

Paul Forster, Investor Director (Founder and ex-CEO at Indeed)

The core team is supported by a strong and growing engineering and marketing team made up of individuals with prior experience within operations such as Amazon, Google and Skype.

The Investment Case
With increasingly connected global markets and operations spanning limitless geographic locations, the task of monitoring events and anticipating their direct and indirect impacts is becoming increasingly complex. A provider of a means to achieve this effectively and facilitate rapid response for commercial benefit would have a powerful client proposition.

The management team will be bolstered by the impending appointment of Richard Gibson as Chairman. This, and the closure of the funding round, should enable the team to focus its energy on finalising the product, delivering their solution to key clients in the most promising vertical and in the longer term to generating recurring revenues.

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