Newable and BPEC secure £10m from British Business Investments to support SMEs
Newable Ventures and Bristol Private Equity Club (BPEC) have secured £10m in new funding from British Business Investments, a commercial subsidiary of the British Business Bank, to fund early stage businesses across the UK.
The £10m commitment from British Business Investments’ Regional Angels Programme will be invested by Newable Ventures, in partnership with BPEC, to deliver around £25m of new funding. The commitment will be split between Newable’s Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) fund, which supports a diversified UK-wide portfolio of knowledge intensive businesses, and a separate pool to back entrepreneurs and businesses specifically across the South West.
In the past three years, Newable Ventures and Bristol Private Equity Club have participated in more than 60 investments combined, totalling over £40m, and now hold stakes in companies such as Cognism, Hummingbird, Rovco and Inductosense.
Chris Manson, CEO of Newable, comments: “This funding commitment forms part of an exciting and ambitious drive to level up business investment across the UK and increase the amount of capital being invested into small British businesses at the core of our economy. Newable Ventures’ investment model, combining its EIS Fund with experienced business angels, is a powerful recipe for providing patient capital to high growth early stage UK companies. The wide-ranging support that Newable provided to some 25,000 SMEs in 2019 also demonstrates our role as more than just a source of capital but as a unique provider of an eco-system of services that can help small businesses thrive.”
Jerry Barnes, founder of Bristol Private Equity Club said: “As the largest and most active Angel Investor in the South West, with 100 members, we know that there is an exciting range of innovative SMEs in the region that can make a major contribution to prosperity with the right support. We are very much looking forward to co-investing with Newable and British Business Investments, helping to select the entrepreneurs and businesses that will go on to achieve great success
Judith Hartley, CEO, British Business Investments, said: “This innovative business model, which leverages the expertise of both Newable Ventures and BPEC, enables British Business Investments to invest alongside two angel networks and the Newable Ventures EIS Fund through our Regional Angels Programme. This initiative will significantly increase the availability of early stage capital to support growing smaller businesses across the South West of England and also the rest of the UK”
