A SCOTS accountancy has been appointed liquidator of an Edinburgh-based video tech firm following the impact of Covid on the business.
Ajenta, known for its virtual classroom platform Vscene, has appointed Shona Campbell of Henderson Loggie as liquidator.
The business says the move to liquidate Ajenta comes as a result of the severe impact Covid restrictions had on its ability to supply hardware to customers.
Despite experiencing its strongest ever trading in recent months, the business has been unable to overcome cashflow difficulties brought on by the pandemic.
Ajenta acquired the Vscene platform in 2018 from educational charity JISC.
Since then, its developers and engineers have further tailored the service to provide market-leading secure video collaboration for over 10,000 customers in education, research and public sectors worldwide.
Eight jobs have been made redundant at the firm, and a small team has been retained to continue to provide the Vscene service to the existing customers while the liquidator explores the sale of the business and assets.
Ajent founder and director John Wilson said: “Like many businesses we experienced a damaging drop off in trading activity during the pandemic which has resulted in a mounting cashflow deficit.
“Vscene provides immersive virtual classroom technology that provides flexible and equitable access for remote students into physical classrooms.
“We are now seeing sharply increasing demand for our services as educational institutions continue to develop hybrid models for teaching and learning.
“Unfortunately, this increase in sales has not been enough to close the financial gap created during lockdown.
“We were confident that additional investment could be secured until recently and as soon it was established that this wasn’t possible, we took steps to seek advice from an insolvency practitioner.
“I regret that we have been unable to continue trading, but our customers will not see any change to their existing service as we already have some interest from potential purchasers of the business.”
Shona Campbell, business recovery and insolvency partner at Henderson Loggie, said: “Ajenta has recurring revenue from the Vscene service, a strong order book, and pipeline of future potential orders so we are hopeful of a speedy and satisfactory sale.
“In the meantime, we will ensure staff receive their full redundancy entitlements and will work with the remaining team to maintain a high level of service for existing customers.”
