As outlined in the British Business Bank’s Equity Tracker report of 2018, the proportion of equity in the UK going to companies with at least one female founder has declined to 18% from 20% in 2017. Companies with female founders were only five per cent of total deals and only two per cent of total investment value. With such media coverage regarding women in business and tech, it still highlights the gargantuan challenge for female-founded businesses to access sufficient investment to scale up. 

Ingenious has led an investment round into Over-C Limited, a London-based analytics company focused on operational performance in the workforce management market. Ingenious helped raise an additional £5.5 million in equity funding, bringing the total raised to £10 million.

Panoramic Growth Equity, a leading equity investor in fast growing, entrepreneurial UK companies, has announced that it has invested £1.5m of growth capital into healthy snacking company Freed Foods Limited, which provides a range of premium plant based gluten-free snacks made with natural ingredients.  Founded by David Ventura and Tomas Mesa, Freed Foods brands include Mister Free’d Tortillas, a range of vegan tortilla chips with innovative flavours and carefully selected super food ingredients.

The British Business Bank has appointed Warren Ralls as UK Network Director, South and East of England. 

The Harwell Space Cluster has added 14 new companies to its impressive roster, now comprised of 92 organisations including the UK and European Space Agencies, STFC RAL Space and The Satellite Applications Catapult. Collectively employing over 1,040 people, Europe’s most concentrated Space cluster is comprised of commercial, public and academic organisations focused on driving innovation in the UK Space market.

Qualis Flow, the environmental management platform that tracks, monitors, and predicts project environmental risk, has raised £725,000 in seed funding. This round of investment is being led by Pi Labs, the proptech VC specialist, alongside Entrepreneur First, MMC Ventures and Rising Tide Europe. 

British businesses in the regions are suffering heavily from ensuing disparities in investment. According to the independent report by the UK 2070 commission, the UK is one of the most regionally unbalanced countries in the industrialised world and the disparities will widen unless the government adopts a radical programme of investment.

Machine Labs, has announced £800,000 equity funding received from Techstart Ventures, the founders, angels investors with additional grant funding from Scottish Enterprise.  The seed funding will be used to recruit a team of eight based in offices opposite Edinburgh Castle.

Andrew Veitch, Founder and CEO of Machine Labs said: "For most of us database marketing is spam or junk mail. Machine Labs want to use machine learning to make marketing messages relevant, so consumers get the right offers at the right time instead of being irritated by marketing they are not interested in."

During the first half of 2019 YFM Equity Partners completed £230m of deals and raised £100m of new funds.  This result represents a sharp increase on 2018 and reflects the resilience and positivity of smaller businesses and demonstrate that this sector is bucking some of the perceived business trends.

Vesalius Biocapital III, the specialist life sciences venture capital investor, has closed its VBC III fund securing EUR 120 million of equity commitments. This includes commitments of EUR 30 million from the European Investment Fund (EIF) and new and existing investors from Europe, the Americas and MENA. The fund is a validation of Vesalius’ proven approach to invest in later-stage European life sciences companies, providing capital to support their development. Vesalius Biocapital III has executed three investments to date.

Private capital is growing in significance as a source of funds for private equity funds, new research carried out by Guernsey Finance has revealed.

WeGift, the digital rewards platform, has secured £4 million in Series A funding, led by Fred Destin at Stride.vc, who also joins the Board of Directors, and other high-profile investors including SAP.iO fund and Unilever Ventures. WeGift also announced new angel investors including James Hind, founder of Carwow and Eamon Jubbawy at Onfido. This investment round will help WeGift deliver on its vision of creating the world’s first real-time infrastructure for digital rewards and incentives. The funds will be used to further scale WeGift’s operations, as well as to support the company’s expansion to the US, and for further investment in its technology platform.