July 2022

We are pleased to announce that BRAN Investments Ltd has recently been added as a signatory to the UK Government’s Investing in Women Code.

A diverse and inclusive business ecosystem is good for customers, entrepreneurs, businesses, investors, and society as a whole. The Investing in Women Code is a commitment to support the advancement of female entrepreneurship in the United Kingdom by improving female entrepreneurs’ access to tools, resources and finance from the financial services sector. The Investing in Women Code recognises that there is already valuable work underway by individual organisations to help women who are seeking to start or scale up their businesses. Signatories to the Investing in Women Code aim to build on this ongoing work.

As a signatory to the Investing in Women Code, BRAN Investments is committed to a culture of inclusion and to advance access to capital for female entrepreneurs. As a signatory, BRAN Investments has a commitment to:

• having a nominated member of the senior leadership team who is responsible for supporting equality in all its interactions with entrepreneurs.
• providing HM Treasury, or a relevant industry body designated by HM Treasury, a commonly agreed set of data concerning: all-female-led businesses; mixed-gender-led businesses and all-male-led businesses. BRAN Investments agrees that HM Treasury will collate this data and publish it on an aggregated and anonymised basis in an annual report.
• adopting internal practices which aim to improve the potential for female entrepreneurs to successfully access the tools, resources, investment and finance they need to build and grow their businesses, working with relevant players in the ecosystem. BRAN Investments will review these actions annually and make this commitment publicly available.

The Investing In Women Code is an important initiative for us at BRAN Investments.  This will build on our work to date that shows in July 2022, the portfolio of companies is 41% female founded or has a female co-founded management team.

Signing up to the Investing in Women Code is part of our vision in having a diverse and inclusive portfolio of companies, including founders who are racially-minoritised, disabled, LGBTQ+ or from financially-disadvantaged backgrounds for example.  We are at this time shareholders in the Black Young Professional network and will continually look to support initiatives and programmes delivering inclusion. Do make contact with us if you would like to discuss a specific initiative or programme.

More details on the Investing in Women Code and to be able to see a full list of signatories, please visit Investing in Women Code – GOV.UK – more details on our future participation in the code will be contained in future News articles.

Allia is a charity that has been at the forefront of impact innovation since 1999, with initiatives across the UK that include housing, cleantech and social innovation.

Allia has helped hundreds of start-ups, small businesses and impact ventures to develop and scale, enabling significant regional employment opportunities, transforming communities and creating positive impact for people, place and planet.  Allia’s social finance solutions have raised £ millions to help charitable organisations with their development and impact aims.

Allia can help support through a range of ways. From its Future Business Centres that support local business communities; its support programmes that help entrepreneurs and ventures to grow their ideas and businesses; and through advising and arranging responsible finance for responsible businesses.  Impressively, by its 20th anniversary in 2019, Allia had:

• Helped 2,099 businesses to start up, thrive and grow, creating new innovations & businesses.
• Helped to create 4,969 jobs from these ventures growing, plus from other employment programmes & grants.
• Arranged £554m in finance to help registered charities, enterprises and sustainable businesses.

We first met Allia in late 2021 and have enjoyed our interaction with the various teams, which includes sharing prospective investment opportunities, attending pitch events and even being a judge at Allia’s recent Climate Accelerator Demo Day.  We are working with Allia on ideas for future collaborations together, so be sure to watch this space for any future news announcements here, as well as being happy to promote their range of services to small businesses.

More details on the activities of Allia can be found at allia.org.uk/about-us/ and further details of its business support programmes, such as the Climate Accelerator, are here futurebusinesscentre.co.uk/our-programmes/

As consumers become increasingly aware of the environmental impacts of consumer goods industries, they are opting to buy second hand more regularly.  This is particularly true of the fashion industry, where resale is expected to grow 11% faster than the broader fashion retail sector by 2025.

The untapped potential of the second-hand market in the UK exists in the £10billion worth of clothing sitting unused in customers wardrobes.  With growing customer demand for second hand fashion, a readily available inventory in products already sold, and the growing regulatory pressure to reduce carbon emissions, fashion retailers are looking for ways to adapt their business models for the future. OWNI has created a solution to enable fashion and lifestyle brands to enter the secondary market and manage the lifespan impact of the products they sell.

OWNI enables retailers to reap the benefits of resale – revenue generation and secondary market access without incurring any costly or challenging operations. OWNI integrates with fashion brands to automate product listings into OWNI users accounts.  Users can then make products available for resale with a click of a button, preventing the need for manual uploads. OWNI tracks products sold on their platform and shares the insights with brands.

OWNI has launched its Minimal Viable Product and integrated 13 brands into their platform, with more than 87 brands on their waitlist.  2,000 users have joined OWNI and more than 500 transactions have occurred on their platform.

OWNI is led by Kalkidan Legesse (CEO) and Vidmantas Markevicius (CFO) who are also co-founders of Sancho’s, a sustainable fashion & ethical gift department shop. Kalkidan was awarded Draper’s Magazine 30 Under 30 in 2021 and winner of independent shop of the year by Holly & Co, and Vidmantas is a Santander UK Award winning entrepreneur.  It was clear when we first engaged with the founders that they both had a passion for sustainable fashion, looking to create a unique solution in the resale market for both retailers and consumers alike.  With impressive early traction with brands onboarded and exciting go to market plans, BRAN Investments concluded an investment into the company in April 2022.

We invested alongside our good friends at Sustainable Ventures, with the investment round completed by several others including the Dixon Foundation and a number of Business Angels, totalling £300,000 in pre-seed investment. This has provided OWNI with a sound early seed funding round that will allow the company to expand its software development and marketing teams. OWNI will also further develop new features for its peer-to-peer platform and expand the functionalities for its retail partners. The raise will also naturally help to increase the marketing efforts of its product.

You can find out more information about OWNI here: https://www.owni.app and we are excited for the future plans in store for the company.  Sign up at OWNI today!

We are pleased to announce a second investment into the existing BRAN Investments portfolio company Loopcycle.

Loopcycle is a digital platform that embeds industrial-scale product traceability, redefining the management, recovery and resale of valuable commercial equipment.

Embedding lasting product traceability at the point of manufacture and resale by assigning a unique product ID, called ‘Cyclecode’, allows users to track product provenance with their smart device.

Loopcycle unlocks the circular and commercial value for its users to foster long-term customer relationships, extend the product lifecycle and improve circularity within the supply chain.

Loopcycle’s Co-Founder and CEO Lugano Kapembwa comes from a strong corporate sustainability management background and Chandan Rajah (Co-Founder and CTO) has an extensive experience in technology, with a previous exit from a start-up of his own.

What initially drew us to the Loopcycle propsotion was the ability to target the buy and replace culture, especially connected to white goods, so empowering all to reduce the volume of product that ends up in landfill.  We have been impressed by the speed at which the team have taken forward the key product development features, as well as customer validation and pipeline that has been generated over the past 12-months.

One year on, the Loopcycle platform traces over 400 products, the team is 6 members strong, and the company have secured key pilots with the likes of Electrolux Professional and NHS Trusts.  Having started in the Commercial Kitchen Equipment sector, Loopcycle aims to expand into IT hardware, automotive components, household electricals and other recoverable B2C goods.

If you have any interest in such sectors and are interested to learn more, contact me for an introduction to such a company.  More details on Loopcycle can be found at loopcycle.io/