Plend, the UK’s first social lending marketplace, has secured £700,000 of investment from early-stage VC’s Tomahawk, Ascension, and Haatch, as well as backing from NBS Ventures, a part of Nationwide Building Society’s Incubator. The investment will be used to disrupt the £24 billion consumer lending market and bring affordable loans to 13 million people in the UK with unreliable, inaccurate or non-existent credit files who are virtually invisible to traditional financial credit scoring systems and therefore vulnerable to financial hardship and exclusion.  

Lower mid-market private equity firm NorthEdge has backed the primary management buyout of Meet, an international talent provider to the life sciences sector.

Maven Capital Partners, one of the UK’s most active private equity houses, has led a £4.4 million investment in Candle Shack, a rapidly growing eCommerce business supplying candle making components as well as providing contract candle manufacture for high profile, luxury brands. The transaction includes £3 million of funding from Maven’s high net worth investment syndicate, Maven Investor Partners, as well as a £1.4 million debt facility from HSBC UK.

Worcestershire-based Sustainable bag-in-box wine brand, When in Rome, has secured £375,000 from the Midlands Engine Investment Fund (MEIF) West Midlands Equity Fund, managed by Midven (part of the Future Planet Capital Group).  Having already secured listings with Waitrose, Ocado and Amazon, the MEIF funding will allow When in Rome to accelerate its growth by upscaling its marketing activities and expanding distribution. The investment also supports three key hires and two contractor roles. 

A green robotics company slashing the cost of maintaining wind turbines is flying high after securing £1.6million in its latest funding round.  Perceptual Robotics uses autonomous drones to map turbines, before passing the images onto a cloud-based artificial intelligence system which processes them to detect damage.

contextflow, a leading provider of artificial intelligence for medical image analysis, has announced a EUR 6.7 Million Series A funding round. A second closing included an additional EUR 2 Million from new co-investor Peak Pride Management GmbH, HPH (Hans Peter Haselsteiner) Start-up Unit and current investor APEX Ventures with its “APEX Best in Class” fund. A first closing was led by B&C Innovation Investments GmbH (BCII) and included participation from new co-investor TTIP Beteiligungs GmbH and current investors APEX Ventures, Crista Galli Ventures, IST cube, Nina Capital and Novacapital.

Elvie, the global health and lifestyle brand developing iconic products for women, has announced an extension of its Series C funding with a further £12.7m ($17.5m) investment.  This investment is an extension to the initial Series C funding announced in July 2021 - and takes Elvie’s total Series C to £70m ($97m).  Founded in 2013 by CEO Tania Boler, Elvie brings together a team of world-class engineers, designers and business minds to develop extraordinary products that improve women’s lives

Manchester-based technology business Culture Shift has secured £1.5m investment in a funding round led by Praetura Ventures and Blackfinch Ventures.  Founded in 2018, Culture Shift has created a platform for people to confidentially and safely report workplace harassment.

Yorkshire-based entrepreneur, Tim Whitworth, of private equity house TIM Group Holdings, has backed an exciting new digital marketing start-up. Created by young female entrepreneur Chloe Byrne, Audience was conceived with the primary purpose of connecting smaller businesses with their target audiences.

A company whose software helps hospitality businesses to boost sales has raised £500,000 from NPIF – Mercia Equity Finance, which is managed by Mercia and is part of the Northern Powerhouse Investment Fund (NPIF).

Veremark, the global pre-employment screening service that helps companies verify employee credentials, has raised a $2.8m seed round in follow-on investment from ACF Investors, Triple Point Ventures and SOV Ventures. This brings the total funding to $3.8m. Launched in late 2019, Veremark provides an automated digital first solution that instantly lets companies, large or small, order a wide range of checks like employment history, academic, criminal and credit records checks anywhere in the world.

BGF, the UK and Ireland’s most active growth economy investor, has exited its investment in BHR Group,