The Insights People, the Manchester-based company which is a global leader in kids, parents and family market intelligence, has secured a £500k investment from DSW Angels, the business angel network focused on UK regional scale-up companies.  The investment will allow The Insights People to boost its international growth and follows its expansion into Brazil, Mexico and Canada in recent months. The company expects to create around eight new jobs in Manchester in the next six months.

Green Angel Syndicate has completed an investment in online, sustainable grocer, Good Club, as part of a £900k raise. Good Club is an online grocer, selling over 2,000 sustainable staples (70% ambient food, 30% non-food), delivered to consumers nationwide direct from wholesalers. The next step in its mission to help people live more sustainable lifestyles is to aim to become the world's first zero-waste online supermarket by developing reusable product packaging along with logistics technology to tackle the single-use plastic crisishead-on.

Investors have rewarded the commercial success of Spotta’s smart pest systems with a $1.18 million seed funding round.  This investment reflects Spotta’s huge potential in global markets in farming, forestry, hospitality, and other sectors to solve the £320 bn ($400 bn) problem of insect pests while dramatically reducing pesticide use.  Representatives of Cambridge Angels and REMUS, a US-based VC firm, will join Spotta’s board as part of the £934,000 ($1,184,287*) investment deal. Other major investors include Martlet Capital, Wren Capital, and the Angel CoFund. 

Belfast-headquartered green technology firm StormHarvester is announcing the conclusion of a €2 million investment round, and is launching a major new recruitment drive.

Following investment from a number of former industry leaders, tech platform Bowimi has grown its development capabilities to expand in the hospitality sector. Bowimi’s platform enables seamless collaboration between brands and venues to deliver memorable product sampling experiences in real-time. Running up to the COVID-19 lockdown they enjoyed a string of successful campaigns and were runners up out of over 200 start ups in the Diageo innovation competition at MADFest. Founders Dan Ghadimi and Dom Bowcock first created Bowimi when they saw the challenges FMCG brands faced when trying to reach the right consumer, in the right place, at the right time.

Neurovalens, a global healthtech company headquartered in Belfast and San Diego, has raised £5.1 million in funding, led by IQ Capital. Wharton Asset Management Company, The Angel CoFund (ACF), Techstart Ventures, Clarendon Fund Managers, and the Government’s Future Fund also contributed to the funding round, which will be used to expand on the success of Neurovalens’ initial clinical trials and develop the technology’s application for other conditions.

An angel network that is among the first to penetrate the $5 trillion Halal consumer market has teamed up with UK fintech Delio to digitise the Halal investment market for angel investors across the globe.  Despite the popularity of the Halal market, no angel network has ever streamlined the investment process in the industry before. Halal Angels Network was launched to promote innovation, entrepreneurship and start-ups, and inspire investors across the world to tap into a sector that will be worth $9.71 trillion by 2025 (Reuters, 2019).

The Edinburgh-based business angel investment syndicate, Archangels, has led investment of £3.3 million in innovative Scottish companies during the Coronavirus lockdown.  Archangels’ Q2 deals data reveals that three of its portfolio companies – Calcivis, BDD and Reactec – have received follow-on funding during the period, with £1.9m of the committed investment coming from Archangels’ syndicate members and the remaining £1.4m from Scottish Investment Bank (the investment arm of Scottish Enterprise) and from the staff and management teams at the companies themselves.

Zedify, the network of first and last mile delivery operations across the UK, have recently raised over £300,000 from a group of private investors led by Green Angel Syndicate (GAS). 

The investment signals the confidence investors have placed in Zedify, and the huge market potential for efficient, consolidated first and last-mile urban deliveries. Antoine Pradayrol, who joins the board as investment director noted the pioneering work Zedify has done to demonstrate the business case for using cargo bikes in the burgeoning urban delivery market.

The Angel CoFund has appointed Dr Olivia Nicoletti to the team as Senior Investment Associate. Joining from Cambridge Enterprise, where she worked on technology transfer for innovations from Cambridge University, Olivia will focus on deep tech investments for the fund.

Beckley Psytech, the psychedelic medicine company, has raised £3m of Series A funding to develop a pipeline of psychedelic drugs into licensed pharmaceutical medicines for treating psychiatric and neurological diseases. Investors in the round include prominent British businessmen Jim Mellon and Richard Reed, co-founder of Innocent Drinks.

The Beckley Psytech team comprises talent from the psychedelic and pharmaceutical fields. It was co-founded by world-renowned leader in psychedelic research Lady Amanda Feilding and CEO Cosmo Feilding Mellen.

Reactec, the Edinburgh-based tech company that recently launched its innovative SAFE-DISTANCE device to enable social distancing among workers, has completed a further £700,000 round of fundraising for the ongoing development of its innovative personal monitoring equipment and reporting technology.

The funding round was led by leading business angel investment syndicate, Archangels, with co-funding from Scottish Investment Bank, the investment arm of Scottish Enterprise.  The funding round included £103,000 of investment from Reactec’s board, management and staff.