Black Founders Programme
The Black Founders Programme is an accelerator targeted at pre-seed or seed stage, Black-founded companies creating innovative products and services...
Digital Catapult welcomes the Government’s announcement of a new £750m fund to be managed by InnovateUK to support innovative businesses in R&D as well as an additional £250m provision through the British Business Bank to support the UK’s startup and scaleup ecosystem.
Dr Jeremy Silver, CEO, Digital Catapult, says: “This contribution will significantly support many of the UK’s fastest growing businesses and is recognition of how innovation and technological creativity will be key to accelerating growth and aiding recovery. In the past year, Digital Catapult’s programmes in key technologies have assisted over 600 rapid growth businesses to raise more than £140m. This additional support is essential to maintaining the UK’s leadership in its high growth business ecosystem, leading Europe in the innovation economy, supporting the creation of new high-value jobs and giving a vital boost to the companies who will lead the post Covid-19 recovery.”
Creative Industries Minister Caroline Dinenage said: “The UK’s creative industries are a highly innovative sector and one of our nation’s greatest assets. Together with the financial support already announced, this new funding will help eligible businesses continue to grow and develop content and services to help our future recovery.”
Janosch Amstutz, CEO, HoloMe said, “The Government’s announcement of the Future Fund is critical to startups like HoloMe. We are a scaling business using AR to enable consumer brand experiences. Growing our funding base is key to our continued growth. We have had a phenomenal few years and aim to continue our upwards trajectory through additional support like this as the economy recovers.”
Tristan Fletcher, CEO, ChAI said, “ChAI has grown extremely quickly. We started with Angel investment and moved to running projects in multiple overseas markets in a matter of months. We recently raised over £1m in investment and the Future Fund will help fast-growing companies like us continue to expand our markets, products and services rather than risking contraction.”
Anthony Karydis, CEO, Mativision, said, “Mativision is pleased to see the Government’s support of high-growth companies like ours. In the past 18 months we increased our sales revenue by 40% and we do not want this progress to be lost. We will continue to build on our successes and with this kind of help available we can continue to grow our business and opportunities for the UK economy.”
The Future Fund will provide government loans to UK-based companies ranging from £125,000 to £5 million, subject to at least equal match funding from private investors. Learn more here.