SA-based emergency services start-up Aura has secured more than R270m in new funding earmarked for its international expansion to the US.
On Friday, the company said it had raised €13.5m (R272.8m) in a series B funding round co-led by the Cathay AfricInvest Innovation Fund (CAIF) and Partech, which brings total funding raised to date €21m.
This latest round, “will fund the company’s expansion into the US and the development of a global ‘clearing house’ to dispatch emergency response without borders”, the company said.
The company also counts local venture capital group Havaíc as a longtime investor.
Founded in 2017 by Warren Myers, Ryan Green, and Adam Pantanowitz in SA, Aura enables people in emergencies to connect instantly with the nearest vetted private security and medical responders, “making lifesaving help available anywhere, anytime”.
The company’s platform aggregates a network of more than 3,000 private security and ambulance fleets.
When a person presses the button function in the Uber ride sharing app, for example, it is Aura’s system that receives the signal and dispatches the nearest security and medical personnel to their location.
In SA, the platform is used by Uber and insurers Momentum and Outsurance to deploy emergency services to their customers, partnering with security companies such as ADT as responders.
Having built a profitable business in the UK and Africa, Myers told Business Day that the US opportunity was immense.
With crime on the rise in many parts of the US and law enforcement struggling to keep up, seven states have mandated that police will only be sent to an alarm call when a crime or incident has been verified. Myers is looking to fill this gap.
“There’s a big demand now for a solution of who’s going to go and verify,” said Myers. This is the gap that Aura is looking to fill in the country, with a strategy of setting up a presence state by state.
He said the opportunity in Texas alone, “which is one of the states where we’ve got our team setting up, is bigger than both SA and the UK combined — just Texas”.
The company says the expansion is poised to transform the security response industry by providing fast, reliable, and cost-effective on-demand security response solutions.
“Aura leverages cutting-edge technology to aggregate existing security fleets and enable rapid response times, greater operational efficiency and transparency, while addressing the increasing demand for private security as a vital alternative to under-resourced police forces,” the company said.
The company has about 1.2-million users, with 1-million in SA .
“Having been involved in Aura’s remarkable story for the past two years, strengthening our partnership via this follow-on investment came as a natural decision to us,” said Patricia Rinke, investment director at CAIF.
“We trust the team’s powerful vision and extraordinary execution capabilities as it scales its life-saving technology to the US market and across the world. We are equally thrilled to welcome Partech as partners in our joint mission to make emergency response universally accessible.”
Would you like to comment on this article?
Sign up (it's quick and free) or sign in now.
Please read our Comment Policy before commenting.