Among the names are Daysoft , the contact lens specialist whose first production laboratory was in Livingston,  Edinburgh: the search engine firm Skyscanner, multimedia networking leader Gigle (R&D centres Edinburgh, Barcelona & marketing US) , and the Glasgow based IT analytics company Sumerian.

Analysis conducted by SEP  demonstrates that its portfolio companies have also had a considerable positive impact on the economy over the longer term. The 40 companies have shown significant growth in sales and job numbers.

SEP says revenues for its portfolio of companies in the year to the end of June were up 23% while the firms collectively had seen their payrolls increase by 10%. In aggregate, companies backed by SEP since 2000 have created approximately 2,000 jobs and now generate more than £500m annually.

Managing partner (right) Calum Paterson said: "The last year has presented very tough challenges and impacted adversely on entrepreneurial and business confidence everywhere. We have been supporting our portfolio companies through the economic downturn, however, and have been impressed by their resilience."

He added: "Our portfolio companies are leading the way in a number of innovativetechnologies and are well-positioned to prosper as and when the economy picks up. We believe this is a good point in the cycle to invest, our appetite for deals is undiminished."

SEP is one of the largest and most active venture capital investors in Europe. New investments in the last 12 months included funding for data quality software company Horsham UK based Clavis  and growth capital for Cmed,  which specialises in the capture and management of data for clinical trials. This month SEP participated in a £6m funding round for Powervation, a leader in IC solutions for energy control and management in information processing systems with offices in Ireland, California and Taiwan. SEP also led to the £10m investment round in Virtensys last week.