About EarthSense

EarthSense delivers products that help users visualise and manage air quality issues. Its award-winning air quality monitors, advanced pollution modelling, and API are critical components in smart systems deployed by companies and local authorities to inform major investments and assess historic exposure and future risk.

Leicester-based scaleup company EarthSense was formed in 2016 to exploit technologies developed at the University of Leicester, and has since signed major deals and partnerships around the world. It won the Queen's Award for Enterprise, Innovation in 2021.

The challenge

EarthSense was looking for further funding to scaleup its overseas operations and also reinforce its IP.

The solution

EarthSense put three different IP assets through Inngot’s tools: Zephyr®, MappAir®  and the MyAir® tech-stack.

Zephyr® is an award-winning, certified, indicative ambient air quality monitor that accurately measures harmful gases and particle matter to provide detailed air quality measurements in real-time at a localised level, such as busy road junctions.

MappAir® is a high-resolution global model of air pollution that uses advanced modelling techniques, cloud-based data inputs including transport and weather data and Machine Learning to create reliable and usable visualisations of air pollution around the world.

MyAir® is an intuitive web application which allows clients and members of the public to view, analyse and download measured and modelled air quality data all in one platform.

Tom Hall, Managing Director of EarthSense, says: “In terms of our business, we see IP as our most important asset. So when our NatWest Relationship Manager, Andy Edwards, mentioned the new IP-backed loan, we did snap his hand off!”

Once NatWest explained the new lending proposition, the role that IP would play in the loan application, and how EarthSense would need to use Inngot’s tools as part of the loan procedure, Tom immediately saw the potential for an IP-rich scaleup like EarthSense. He says that the Inngot platform’s valuation for EarthSense’s IP was more than enough for NatWest to offer them the initial funding they needed.

He adds: “We are expecting to expand our IP asset base significantly in the next 12 months, and I would expect to be coming back in and leveraging the value of our IP further.”

Andy Edwards, the NatWest Relationship Director who worked with EarthSense to help them through the bank’s application process, says: “I’ve known EarthSense for a number of years – it’s a business that excites me and I really believe in them. When NatWest launched the High Growth IP-backed loan, I immediately thought it was a way they could leverage their cash flow and their innovative IP.”

The result

£264,000 IP loan approved by NatWest

EarthSense used the IP it has developed in its award-winning detectors, online platform and apps as collateral to borrow £264,000 from NatWest

As Britain’s biggest bank for start-ups, at NatWest we see innovative and disruptive businesses like EarthSense pass through our doors every day. We believe in powering up their success, which is why we are the only UK bank to offer a mass-market IP-backed lending proposition for SMEs, starting from amounts as low as £250,000.

We know that access to finance is often the biggest hurdle for high growth tech firms, who may have incredible IP, but can lack the tangible assets needed to secure growth funding. Solving this problem will help companies like EarthSense develop solutions to tackle the world’s most pressing problems, while driving forward their growth and boosting the UK economy.

Neil Bellamy - Head of Technology, Media and Telecoms at NatWest Group