A MOBILE phone-based information service, 82Ask, launched by one of Britain’s top rising female entrepreneurs, is aiming to float on the stock market early next year after raising £1.3m in funds, including backing from leading hedge-fund manager Crispin Odey.

The company, which is changing its name to Texperts, is led by chief executive Sarah McVittie, a former UBS investment banker. McVittie was recently named in a survey by Management Today as one of the top 35 women under 35 who are rapidly making a name for themselves in the business world.

The fundraising values Texperts at about £7m. McVittie and co-founder Thomas Roberts, another former UBS banker, each have about a 15% stake in the business. Crispin Odey’s hedge fund group, Odey Asset Management, is understood to have provided most of the new funding and now has a stake of around 14% in Texperts.

Over the past four years, Texperts has raised £2.5m, mainly from wealthy individuals in three fundraising rounds.

The company is understood to have rebuffed takeover approaches from a number of rivals, including Yell, the owner of Yellow Pages, and 118 118, the directory-inquiries service.

Texperts allows users to text a question to a team of research experts who promise to provide an answer within five minutes. Users are charged £1 per question only if the inquiry is fully completed.

The service, which has close to 400,000 users, has a network of 220 experts answering questions on anything from trivia and entertainment to recommending restaurants, providing travel information and sending maps to people’s mobile phones.

The company, which is profitable, is expanding fast with users growing at a rate of about 20% each month.

Texperts’ users are typically aged between 19 and 35, unlike some rivals that have concentrated on the so-called “novelty” market, providing answers to trivia questions and targeting teenagers.

McVittie said that Texperts is also considering whether to use its growing database to run targeted marketing campaigns for other companies.

She said that most of the £1.3m raised will be spent on a £1m marketing and advertising campaign – well above the £200,000 spent to date.

“We are in a market that is still embryonic, but has scope to develop fast. Someone is going to make a lot of money out of the right interface and platform. We are aiming for it to be us. A float is something that we are definitely looking at,” said McVittie.

The company has also strengthened its board by appointing Richard Brennan, a former marketing vice-president at Orange, the mobile-phone-network operator.

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