Safety tech startup Tended receives £2.4m funding boost to accelerate growth

Homeland November 12, 2021

Safety technology startup, Tended, has secured £2.4 million in investment to further propel its growth, bringing the company’s total funding to £4.4 million.

The funding was led by existing investor Blackfinch Ventures, with participation from early-stage European venture capital firm Basinghall Partners, UKRI, and a number of industry-specific angel investors.

Founded in 2017 by Leo Scott Smith, Tended creates wearable safety solutions that are used across industries, including construction, manufacturing, utilities, and logistics to improve employee safety and site efficiency. The start-up already counts industry leaders, such as Siemens, Rolls-Royce, Network Rail, Unilever and Babcock, as its customers, helping them to improve their occupational safety.

The investment comes as Tended bolsters its offering with a new safety culture solution. It combines their wearable technology with behavioural psychology to transform safety across working environments.

This new product uncovers in-depth insights into an organisation’s safety culture and offers valuable recommendations and resources to drive positive behavioural changes. The wearables act as reinforcement, helping to promote safer behaviours by alerting employees before entering a hazardous area or unsafe zone. By addressing the underlying influences of human behaviour and making safety culture improvements, Tended aims to prevent 95% of workplace accidents. According to HSE, this figure represents the total number of occupational injuries that are caused by human error.

The seven-figure investment will help support growth and facilitate further research and development of their safety culture solution.

Tended’s CEO and founder, Leo Scott Smith, commented: “Every company has its own unique set of safety challenges. Interventions such as training and processes only go so far to improve safety. We’re helping companies uncover and understand the underlying influences of unsafe actions and provide the resources to help them change those behaviours.

“We aim to help companies achieve sustainable change to promote a safer workplace and positive employee experience. The team has been working hard on product development and thanks to investors like Basinghall, we’re one step closer to making sure loved ones return home from dangerous working environments at the end of the day.”

Ginette Oebel, Founding Partner at Basinghall Partners said: “Tended is an inspiring company with a vision to significantly improve safety in workplaces using precision and science-based tools. Basinghall is delighted to support Tended on its journey and also to make Tended’s solutions accessible to our Industry Partners.”

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Babcock Blackfinch Venture Network Rail Rolls-Royce Siemens Tended Unilever