April 2022

Sustainable Ventures is the home of climate tech.

Sustainable Ventures has been scaling sustainable business ventures since 2011 and have a passion for sustainable innovation for a net-zero future.

Sustainable Ventures has created Europe’s largest climate tech ecosystem, offering shared workspace, commercialisation services and investment to entrepreneurs to help accelerate their growth and Sustainable Ventures is on a mission to help develop 1,000 sustainable start-ups by 2025. To date Sustainable Ventures has:

• Invested in 32 early-stage ventures across a range of sustainability sectors.
• Opened 4 shared workspaces, housing over 100 climate tech businesses – further expansion of the flagship site at County Hall, London is underway that will triple the floorspace managed.
• Provided commercialisation support to over 300 ventures across the UK, leveraging their network of industry experts.

Investment has been focused on the pre-seed stage to date, with investees benefiting from an intensive 12-month programme of growth support. This not only helps to increase the survival rate of investees, with only 1 of the 32 investments having failed, but also adds significant value to entrepreneurs – the portfolio data shows that Sustainable Ventures is achieving an average valuation uplift of 2.7x to the next funding round (vs. market average of c1.5x). Sustainable Ventures is also in the early stages of raising a new Seed/ Series A fund to help support pipeline companies as their capital needs grow.

BRAN Investments first co-invested with Sustainable Ventures in March & April 2021 in two ventures, Loopcycle and BIOPHILICA, who you will learn more on in future Newsletter editions.  We have also just completed an investment into a third company with Sustainable Ventures, Owni (shwap.uk), of which we will be releasing more details of such an investment in due course.

We look forward to continuing this relationship into the future with Sustainable Ventures, of which more details on them for you can be found at: Sustainable Ventures

At the recent Cop26 Glasgow Climate Change Conference, nations took a range of decisions in the collective effort to limit global temperature rise to 1.5 degrees.

This was welcomed by all and in particular by our portfolio company Cogo, who have identified that many of us want to live more sustainably but our actions don’t often align with our values.

Cogo is on a mission to empower hundreds of millions of consumers and businesses world-wide to become conscious consumers by taking action to measure, reduce and compensate for their impact on the world. Cogo enables everyone to join together to create a fairer and more sustainable world.

Cogo’s Good Impact Framework helps millions of customers understand the impact of their spending, but Cogo recognises that information alone is not enough to lead to actual sustainable behaviour change.

That is why Cogo developed API and App solutions, which are powered by world-leading sustainability data and behavioural science. They are delivered either directly, or via corporates, to the consumer/businesses end-user.

Cogo have established growth partnerships in the Financial Services sector in NZ, Australia and the UK, with an “in progress” pipeline in other markets to reach 500m end-users.  In the UK, NatWest has integrated the API into their retail bank App and Santander promote a co-branded version of the D2C Cogo app to their retail customers.

BRAN Investments are proud to have made an investment into Cogo in the summer of 2018, having been impressed by the passion and drive of the Founder Ben Gleisner | LinkedIn in wanting to create systemic positive impact.

In the proceeding 4-years, Cogo have gone on to raise an additional $10m to continue their quest for positive impact and are empowering millions of consumers around the world to have a positive impact.  As per Cogo’s motto, Let’s go change the world!

More details on the Cogo product offering for both consumers and businesses can be found at Cogo.

We believe that social and environmental challenges need to be overcome with better entrepreneurial solutions. It has also become clearer over the last 5-years since we were founded that there is a growing demand for new businesses to deliver impact and that diverse teams deliver better performance, impact, and returns.

BRAN Investments funds ambitious and diverse founders who are on a mission to bring unique products and services to the market for scalable positive impact.   Our desire is that these products and services help tackle social and environmental issues that will fundamentally change the world for the better, and for all of us.

And we believe in leading by example.

Our principles and values guide the way we work. Fairness, honesty, ambition and graft are the values that built the Goyal businesses and we are strong advocates of diversity and inclusion and are ourselves involved in a number of social impact projects including the creation of a Foundation and a project that we founded to help to tackle loneliness.

We have shaped the BRAN Investments portfolio across three key verticals being:

1. Health and social care
2. Technology with social impact
3. Ethical and vegan produce

Whilst this sector is an important consideration currently, the right mix of people, passion and plans is equally important for us.

Investments in numbers – some interesting stats

• 5 years of experience and a track record of building an early-stage venture portfolio through an investment of circa £2m to date
• 28 for good / impact live trading ventures in the portfolio
• A diversified portfolio across B2B SaaS, Direct to Consumer, Marketplaces, Consumer Goods and Services, as well as Restaurant offerings
• £61m of follow-on investment raised by our portfolio companies
• One early exit achieved – Bloombox Club UK who were acquired by Canadian Listed PlantX Life Inc in November 2020 for a cash sum and common shares
• 43% of our portfolio companies have a female Founder / Co-Founder

BRAN Investments is a family founded company formed by Beena, Ram, Ashish and Nisha Goyal whose own multiple business successes inspired them to want to help other start-up companies of like-minded people, to achieve the same success.

With 40 years of combined experience in business and property, the family, operating as BRAN Investments, offer direct funding and provide access to capital along with their own expertise and a large network of knowledgeable commercial contacts to help new and promising ventures achieve more.

Why do they do it?

Founded in early 2017 and with their vast experience in building businesses and a property portfolio, the Goyal Family saw banks become reluctant lenders.  Hearing of numerous great ideas and well-run businesses who were unable to win the financial backing they needed to grow, they realised BRAN Investments could help. Once they had identified the problem, they joined others in the UK SME investment market to help provide a solution.

If we fast forward 5-years, BRAN Investments has made a total of 35 unique early-stage equity investments so far.  This has included co-investment with several well-respected early stage and venture capital funders in the UK eco-system.

Who do they invest in? 

Start up companies who have the same values as they do – fairness, honesty, ambition and sheer graft!   Why do they do it?  Because they are dedicated to helping passionate people achieve the same real business success as they have.

Who am I?

My name is Martin Carruthers, and I have been lucky to be a part of that growth and have contributed to additional success having joined BRAN Investments in November 2020.  My role has been to support the existing portfolio of companies and to assist the family in making further investments which help new and promising ventures achieve more.  You will see more on the investment ethos of the Family in the next section.

Through this newsletter you will also learn more about the BRAN Investment portfolio companies who have enjoyed investment opportunities and company growth, plus new sectors of interest for us going forward, some new investment announcements and more about the good people we work with.

Welcome to the world of BRAN Investments!