Leah Hutcheon, founder and CEO of the Edinburgh-based software company, Appointedd, and former EIE participant, shares her experience as a female founder and offers advice to the ten female-led companies pitching on 24 April in Edinburgh.

The Newable Ventures Scale Up Fund 2 has completed its year-long investment cycle, havig invested £1 million into a diverse portfolio of early stage companies spanning the materials, spacetech and software sectors. Investee companies were based across the U.K (Newcastle, Oxford, Cambridge, Bristol and London) and round sizes ranged from £500k to £2.8m. The fund which was able to leverage Newable Group’s wider office space and advisory service offerings, targeted scale up companies where technology risk had been mitigated and capital was being used to ramp up commercial operations.

Touch Biometrix has received a £2million investment from Deepbridge Capital.

The Series A funding through the Deepbridge Technology Growth Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) fund follows initial seed funding of £150,000 last year.

North Wales based Touch Biometrix is developing a new class of fingerprint sensor for application to consumer electronics such as smartphones and laptops.

Scottish Equity Partners has sold its portfolio of onshore wind farms to Pensions Infrastructure Platform (PiP) for an enterprise value of £50 million.

Comprising 64 turbines in locations across the UK and Ireland the SEP portfolio contains all five of the wind farm investments made by the Environmental Capital Fund (ECF), a specialist infrastructure fund managed by SEP. The portfolio ranges from single-turbine sites across the Orkney and Shetland Islands to utility-scale turbines in Curraghderrig, Ireland and the Port of Tilbury in London.

Following the publication of research suggesting that women are more successful than men when it comes to crowdfunding for scientific research, Juliet Eccleston, co-founder and CEO of AnyGood?, has warned that these results illustrate the shocking level of unconscious bias that still exists in us all – and the pressing need for change.

The Midlands Engine investment fund, through Maven Capital Partners, has provided Aurelius Environmental Ltd, an environmental management and materials recycling business, with a £1.5 million debt funding package.

The funding will be used by Aurelius to purchase new machinery to improve efficiencies, reduce the company’s carbon footprint and help to support its sustainable development strategy and strong social and economic ethos.

Ingenious, the leading alternative investment manager that specialises in the Media, Infrastructure, Real Estate and Education sectors, has expanded its institutional funds business with the appointment of Luke Burdess as Business Development Director.

Ingenious, which has been growing its network of relationships in Asia and the Middle East for the last few years, will offer innovative institutional strategies for domestic and global institutions. The team will leverage their deep sector knowledge to access investment opportunities usually unavailable to institutional investors.

Foresight Group has made a £5 million growth capital investment into Northern Ireland’s largest private healthcare business, 352 Medical Group Limited. 

Great Point Investments, the UK’s leading media production and investment company, has acquired a minority stake in Brightlobe, a pioneering game-based platform that supports children’s growth and development.

The £580,000 investment is the first deal from the Great Point Ventures Fund, an Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) launched in Q4 2018 which offers investors the opportunity to invest across a portfolio of UK based businesses operating in the media creative industries.

Shedul.com, the world’s fastest growing booking platform for salons and spas, has announced a Series B investment of $20 million, valuing the company at $105 million. The round was led by Partech, an investment firm with hubs in Paris, San Francisco, and Berlin, along with participation from Berlin-based Target Global, Dubai-based BECO Capital, and New York-based FJ Labs.

Limitless Technology, the London-based inventor and provider of a SaaS platform offering AI and crowd sourced customer service solutions, has announced it has successfully raised £5million in Series A funding.

The funding is led by AlbionVC, with participation from all existing investors including Downing Ventures and Unilever Ventures. It will now enable the provider to continue successfully disrupting the customer service industry as it further develops its SmartCrowd™ platform.

eFront, the leading financial software and solutions provider dedicated to Alternative Investments, has published its latest Quarterly Private Equity Performance report, showing that private equity funds globally have continued their strong showing of recent years, with performance stabilizing at levels close to the record set in 2017.