ProFinda has received 拢1m in funding from Nesta Impact Investments, the venture capital arm Nesta, to accelerate the deployment of its platform across the private, public and third sector, and increase social impact.
Nesta Impact Investments aims to supports businesses which have the potential to deliver clear social impact as a part of their business model.
Formerly NESTA, National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, NESTA was established in 1998 with an endowment from the UK National Lottery and became an independent charity in 2012.
ProFinda鈥檚 technology is designed to help workplaces manage supply chains of people, and understand their collective skills so that work and projects can be directly matched to actual knowledge, capability, experience and skills.
It is used in a wide range of contexts including workforce resource management by global professional services partnerships, client network support by leading private banking organisations and network mobilisation by international disaster management bodies.
The Nesta investment will be used to make its technology available to non-profits and improve its proprietary 鈥榮kills machine鈥� learning tech.
The firm uses its machine learning platform to understand the skills and knowledge of a company鈥檚 total workforce, based on a skills 鈥榦ntology鈥�, which utilises tools such as semantic parsing and matching to understand existing skills.
鈥淣esta Impact Investments has a strong track record of supporting businesses using cutting edge technology to develop novel approaches to emerging societal challenges.
鈥淧roFinda is exploring two of our key areas of research – the future of work and collective intelligence.
鈥淲e want to continue to support organisations like ProFinda that are developing innovations that will uncover the hidden skills and capabilities across society and enable new ways of working.
Roger Gorman, ProFinda’s CEO, added: 鈥淧eople work better when their work makes the most of their skills and interests and builds in purpose.
鈥淭he challenge is that it鈥檚 all too easy for skills and interest to be wasted. Talent is hidden behind job titles or departmental walls.鈥�