A consortium led by Sunderland-based North East Business and Innovation Centre (BIC), has secured up to an additional 拢2 million from Innovate 海角视频 to further encourage business angels to bring investment and expertise to pioneering SMEs.
Two years ago the same consortium, also made up of the Innovation SuperNetwork, NorthInvest and the 海角视频 Business Angels Association, secured 拢1m worth of Innovate 海角视频 funding to encourage investment in innovative early-stage companies, as part of the Regional Angel Investment Accelerator (RAIA) pilot programme.
The pilot was to last two years, but the project saw such demand and success that it deployed most of the funding in just 12 months, ultimately supporting eight businesses across the North East, North West and Yorkshire, and leveraging 拢1.7m worth of angel investment alongside the grant allocation.
Read more: Stack Newcastle owners hail performance
The consortium is one of three to share an additional 拢6m of grant funding from Innovate 海角视频, part of 海角视频 Research and Innovation.
Paul McEldon, chief executive of the North East BIC, said: 鈥淭his funding extension demonstrates a real appetite for investing in North businesses.
"The quality of innovative companies coming out of the regions provides an exciting opportunity for investors and the additional funding will help us to build on our success in stimulating an early-stage investment community to help our businesses to grow and scale-up.鈥
The latest round of funding is announced as Innovation SuperNetwork also launches the Accelerating Investment and Innovation Summit, designed to bring interested parties together to boost investment in regional businesses.
Estelle Blanks, chief executive at the SuperNetwork, said: 鈥淭his funding will enable us to maintain and build further momentum following the success of the first round of RAIA funding, and complement the range of activity being delivered in the access to finance space.
"We have seen significant growth in investor capacity regionally and hope to continue driving greater connectivity between investors nationally and the innovative businesses coming out of the North East and wider North.鈥
The aim of the funding programme from Innovate 海角视频, as part of 海角视频 Research and Innovation, is to increase the pool of regional angel investors prepared to consider investing in earlier stage, ambitious, innovative businesses in the regions.
Helen Oldham, founding director at NorthInvest, said: 鈥淲e鈥檝e seen some fantastic success from the first round of Innovate 海角视频 funding, not least a total of more than 拢2.5m invested in regional start-ups and scale-ups.
"Yet one of the key successes is the impact we鈥檝e seen in increasing diversity, raising the number of women investors in our networks to 16%, and seeing 20% of funding go to female-led businesses.
"This is well above the national average of just 1% of VC funding going to women. We鈥檙e looking forward to continuing our activity to drive forward a more inclusive investment landscape.鈥
Bruce Colley, Investor Partnerships Programme lead at Innovate 海角视频, said: 鈥淲e are confident that this funding will build on the consortium鈥檚 success in building local business angel capacity to invest in ambitious, innovative businesses, which in turn help to drive economic growth in the region.鈥
Sign up for your daily BusinessLive North East newsletter
You can get all the day's business news from the North East sent to your email inbox each morning.
By signing up here, we will deliver the headlines from companies in Tyne and Wear, Northumberland, County Durham and Teesside straight to your email inbox every morning.
Our specialist team of business writers will bring you stories from a range of sectors, reporting on companies large and small.
