Tech Nation has revealed the 30 companies joining its Upscale programme for the UK’s fastest growing scale-up tech companies.

Now in its fifth year, the latest cohort reflects the maturity of the tech landscape in the UK, with most of the companies on the programme having already raised a Series A round, and the average raise increasing from £4.2 million in 2017 to £7.2 million in 2020.

Average revenues have also increased by 64 per cent from £1.1 million to £1.8 million over three years, while the average number of employees when joining the cohort has grown by 48 per cent from 31 to 46.

This cohort reflects just a small part of the UK tech scale-up ecosystem - in total, there are almost 5,000 UK tech scale-ups which add £17.2 billion to the UK economy and employ almost 200,000 people.

The Upscale programme aims to create a peer-to-peer network of companies and includes sessions led by tech entrepreneurs from some of the UK’s most successful companies, including Nilan Peiris, the vice president of growth at Transferwise, and Will McInnes, the chief marketing officer at Brandwatch.

Companies are selected through a judging process of tech entrepreneurs and established venture capital firms, including Anthony Fletcher, chief executive of Graze, and Cherry Freeman, chief executive of Lovecrafts, as well as entrepreneurs who have gone through the programme themselves, such as Aron Gelbard, chief executive of Bloom & Wild.

This time round, 30 per cent of companies joining the programme are from outside of London, with scale-ups based in Manchester, Cardiff, Cambridge, Leeds, Brighton, Belfast and Newcastle.

Companies also hail from all different tech sub-sectors: 17 per cent are in the HealthTech sector, 17 per cent are in software-as-a-service and 17 per cent are in e-commerce.

Digital minister Matt Warman commented: "The UK has a fantastic track record of producing globally successful tech companies and this is another strong group of firms that will benefit from Tech Nation’s Upscale programme – it highlights the strength and diversity of our digital economy with startups in fintech, retail and recruitment.”

The latest cohort is made up of the following firms:

• allplants - London

• AMPLYFI - Cardiff

• Arctic Shores - Manchester

• Chattermill - London

• Eagle Genomics - Cambridge

• eporta - London

• Everledger - London

• Farewill - London

• Florence - London

• Kheiron Medical - London

• LandTech - London

• Lexoo - London

• Neurovalens - Belfast

• Oddbox - London

• Panintelligence - Leeds

• Peanut - London

• Pimberly - Manchester

• Plum - London

• Seatfrog - London

• SeedLegals - London

• SoPost - Newscastle

• Spirable - London

• ThoughtRiver - Cambridge

• Thriva - London

• TrustedHousesitters - Brighton & Hove

• Tyk - London

• Vidsy - London

• WhiteHat - London

• Zen Educate - London

• Zencargo - London

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