Inventive Hedgehog aims for the heights

Mar 6 2008 by Andrew Mernin, The Journal

A FLEDGLING IT firm has laid out plans to become a £20m-a-year company in five years and an ambitious long-term aim to become “the next Sage” after landing £60,000 in funding.

Hedgehog Lab, of South Shields, has designed a groundbreaking piece of software to enable banks and mortgage lenders to create online banking facilities in a third of the time it takes with current software.

The company, launched last year, remains at the research and development stage, but expects to bring its new software to market by summer 2009 after receiving financial backing from NorthStar Equity Investors.

Sarat Pediredia, who launched the firm with business partner Mark Forster, said: “We’ll have a demonstration model of the software ready by August this year and we are targeting high street banks across the country.

“We want to grow as big as Sage and if I am optimistic, I would say this could take 10 years. The four biggest banks alone spend around £100m on the kind of product this software produces, so it could take us some way to where we want to be.”

Mr Forster said: “We are excited about this game-changing product, which will help transform how web applications are delivered in the financial services industry, especially lenders who have a need to deploy online forms quickly and require systems that can respond to business change.”

Hedgehog Lab is currently in discussions with leading organisations in the financial services sector and is expected eventually to extend the product to the wider enterprise market.