GOOGLE were very excited by it. They knew it was the case but they had no way of proving it, and we’d just proved it.”

Neil Tocher, chief technology officer at Edinburgh firm NC Tech, says this in a matter-of-fact tone, but there can’t be many businesses anywhere that can make such comments about arguably the biggest technology company in the world.

What NC Tech had proved was that a single sophisticated 360 degree camera that was easy to use could be far more successful at recruiting businesses to Google’s Street View programme than a team of photographers.

In early 2015, NC Tech sent three people out into Europe armed with an iStar camera – which the firm had developed for military use. These people visited local shops and business and asked them if they wanted their stores featured on Street View.

“We signed up 2,600 businesses in three months, which is more than probably the entire Google network of 5,000 photographers could do.”

Six months after that meeting with Google, NC Tech had a new product available that would change its trajectory.

This breakthrough came six years after Mr Tocher set up NC Tech with chief executive Cameron Ure. The company has its roots in Connected Digital Media, an events AV company, where the pair first worked.

Soon after they formed a company called eTours, which used nascent 360 degree camera technology to give prospective house buyers a look inside a property that had never been possible before.

Keen to branch out internationally, eTours soon faced a problem: it was impossible to manage a team of photographers on such a scale. As they were looking at solutions, Lehman Brothers went under, the world shook and “the last thing anyone was putting money into was houses, so we shut the whole system down overnight,” says Mr Tocher.

The following year, NC Tech was established with a different remit.

“We weren’t going to do real estate. Nothing was ‘safe as houses’ anymore, so we went after Government, they always seem to have money,” says Mr Tocher.

With their knowledge and experience, they were able to build what Mr Tocher describes as a “very high-end camera that outperforms every single thing in the market”.

This was iStar – a 360 degree imaging device which was aimed primarily at the military reconnaissance missions; its design was influenced by a focus group with members of the SAS.

Having engaged with a number of potential manufacturing partners, NC Tech took the bold decision to make everything themselves, using local Edinburgh firms when needed.

“We ensured that what we were building was the absolute best we could do with limited resources. Keeping it local meant we had a good strong handle on it. No language barriers, no delays in shipping, no IP infringements. It cost more but the product that we ship today as iStar is 90 per cent the same product we started building when we set out.”

The next step for the business was to develop software to process and analyse the data captured by the camera.

“We were up against really big names, multi-billion dollar companies. We’re saying ‘yeah we’ll enter that market and show you guys how to do it’.”

Mr Tocher laughs.

“To be fair we did a very good job. iStar outperformed everything on the market, it just took a few years to get the software right.”

By this point, the device was being targeted at engineers and architects, in addition to the military. Having made its software open source in a bid to integrate with larger better-known platforms, a big break came when Leica integrated NC Tech’s software into its own software.

“That was a big achievement for us to get that level of integration,” says Mr Tocher.

It was around this time that Mr Tocher set up a meeting with contacts at Google, and using experiences from the eTours days, showed the company how it could transform Streetview with an NC Tech camera.

The result was iris, a camera branded as Google Streetview approved. It is based on everything that had made the iStar market-leading but simplified to reduce the cost.

“The problem is that Google is a big company, so as soon as they announced it, we had a big spike in orders and our production issues started.

“We had a supply and demand issue. We had to scale the company, so we were not only producing new cameras, we were trying to hire and expand and train new staff.”

That about takes us to the present, where NC Tech remains in the midst of a growth period, and is about to consolidate two offices in Morningside and one production facility in Longniddry into a larger building in The Meadows that will be home to all 26 current employees.

Staff levels doubled in 2015 and Mr Tocher said the company is on track to add that number again.

Initial funding at the business came from Archangels and Scottish Enterprise, both of whom Mr Tocher described as “a total life saver”.

More recently, £500,000 funding was agreed with Barclays, which is being used to help buy the products required to fulfil current orders.

The company is outperforming its projections and Mr Tocher said it should enter the black by “around £1m” this year.

Mr Tocher describes NC Tech as an “R&D company that happens to sell product and develop software too”.

Next up for the company is IrisVR, a camera capable of working with augmented and virtual reality. For the uninitiated, the IrisVR allows the user to take a 360 degree image of a room. After being processed through NC Tech’s software, a 3D model is uploaded to a virtual reality headset, allowing users to step inside the image and walk around inside it.

“There are not many camera systems in the world today that can do it,” says Mr Tocher. “We’re pioneering, developing technology that’s going to be coming through in the next year or two – and that’s why we’re expending the office.

“Google have said we challenge them and push them. We’re two years ahead of where Google are today, so by the time people understand it we’ve got it to market and Google supports it.”

The company has teamed up with Intel to launch the product, which will retail at around $500. Mr Tocher said they need the clout of a global brand as it has sales targets “in the millions”.

“We are trying to make an impact, to be the de facto system for everyone in the world to use to create VR content,” says Mr Tocher.

“We’ve got the best capabilities because we’ve been working in 3D modelling for years. All those years of development we did in engineering to make iStar work has lent itself perfectly to the new products.”