The Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS), a cornerstone of the UK's entrepreneurial ecosystem, celebrates its 30th anniversary this year. Since its inception in 1994, the EIS has played a pivotal role in nurturing innovation and fostering economic growth. Alongside its sister scheme, the Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme (SEIS), it has facilitated over £30 billion in private investment into 53,000 startups across the nation.

AB Akola Group has signed an agreement with Brite Drinks Ltd, a UK functional drinks start-up, to invest 450 thousand euros. Akola Group will receive a minority stake in the startup and a seat on its board.

South London-based start-up, B-Corp rated MOMO Kombucha has announced a £1million fund raise.  The brand is also rolling out to Gail’s Bakery nationwide, as well as to Riverford Organic and they have also taken Ocado’s top spot as best-selling soft drink and will achieve 150% revenue growth at the start of ’24, they should hit £3m in revenue this year, marking the boom in kombucha consumption.

The EdTech company, founded by Salisbury mum-of-three Kirstin Coughtrie, has gone through its biggest growth quarter to date – with both significant new angel investments, alongside its learners tripling since the start of this academic school year.

British Business Investments has announced that it is providing a £15m facility to Performance Finance Limited. The transaction will be structured as a block discounting agreement that will allow Performance Finance to provide funding support to smaller businesses looking to acquire business-critical assets to accelerate their growth.

Veremark, a global background screening company, has secured $3 million in a Pre-Series B round led by Samaipata and Stage 2 Capital and including participation from ACF Investors and Vulpes Investment. The investment will be used to support Veremark’s continued client acquisition and further develop its screening technology.

The need for more compliant hiring has become a global requirement, with background screening alone equating to a  $8bn global market in desperate need of innovation.  Veremark provides a global background screening service that helps companies run checks on prospective employees, business partners, limited partners and founders — therefore reducing the risk of hiring or working with underqualified or legally unsuitable people. 

Ingenion Medical has been awarded a £182,890 grant to support its £406,000 development project, to complete development of its next novel device to address chronic urinary control issues.

Meysey, a fraud protection startup that utilises artificial intelligence (AI), has successfully raised £250,000. This funding will be used to develop AI-powered fraud protection software specifically designed for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

LCR Angel Network has made investments in two of the region’s most exciting start-up businesses following a pitch event hosted at Sci-Tech Daresbury and supported by the British Business Bank.

Both Jardin Living, a sustainable lifestyle brand founded by Kavita Basi, and AI Sight, an AI system for diabetic retinal screening led by CEO Steven Powell impressed enough to secure a combined £160k investment that will allow both businesses to scale significantly.

Pioneering UK-based bio-tech business Clean Food Group has rasied £2.5 million from Clean Growth Fund, a climate-specific UK venture capital fund, providing UK cleantech entrepreneurs with the expertise and capital they need to reduce carbon emissions and tackle the climate crisis. This follows an earlier funding in 2022, which included a number of angel investors.

Scaleup Finance has raised an $8million (£6.4million) pre-Series A round to ‘solve the challenge of financial management’ for startup and scale-up companies.

Led by Inveready, alongside Crowberry Capital, Seed X, PROfounders, Fin Capital and CircleRock Capital, the funds will be used to help drive continued growth in the UK and prepare for future expansion into the US. 

A new assessment of British Patient Capital’s Future Fund: Breakthrough reveals that the programme is successfully increasing later stage capital investment into deeptech and life sciences companies – the sectors it was founded to support.