Published on the 14/09/2015 | Written by Newsdesk
Crime prevention software developer Auror (formerly Eyedentify) has completed a round of funding to support further development and expansion of its software…
Auror, the New Zealand customers of which include supermarkets, petrol stations, sports and homeware stores, secured the funding from a range of tech investors including Sam Morgan, Sir Stephen Tindall’s investment fund K1W1 and Australian investor Reinventure.
The company’s CEO, Phil Thomson said the investment will allow Auror to further refine its solution and set up its Australian operations, taking its products to the global stage.
Co-founder Tom Batterbury said the company had changed its name to “better reflects our mission of connecting the dots to shed light on crime.” The word ‘Auror’ is probably best recognised by Harry Potter fans as a class of highly trained wizard.
Morgan said the problem of high-volume crimes like shoplifting and petrol drive-offs is universal. “It’s not a question of opportunistic theft, it’s a coordinated effort by crime groups who regularly work together to target New Zealand businesses. Business and police have to adapt to better prevent this sort of crime [and] Auror is a key enabler to underpin a preventative approach to this kind of theft.”
Thomson said the company provides tools to proactively combat crime, with even relatively simple tasks such as reporting an incident to the police reducing the average time taken from 90 to less than ten minutes.
Auror said it digitises previously manual processes, connecting information in a smarter way. As businesses report incidents online, the software connects the dots on organised criminal activity in real-time and then provides this information to the right people in a more actionable way.
