As a teenager, Erkin Adylov looked after sheep, goats and cows in his remote village in the former Soviet Union state of Kyrgyzstan where his family was living on $60 a month. So when at the age of 16 he won a competition for a scholarship from the Soros Foundation (now the Open Society Foundation) to study in the US for a year, it was “almost like winning the lottery”, he said.

Sitting casually in his South London office adorned with a bean bag chair and a pirate sign on the wall, the founder of Behavox - a financial technology firm - incongruously describes his path from sheep herding to setting up his own growing business that is attracting attention from the likes of Google, venture capital firms and hedge funds.