Launched in October 2016, Big Drop Brewing is a world-leading alcohol-free craft brewer. The company brews beer naturally by using specialist brewing methods to ensure the alcohol never exceeds 0.5%. The beer is not only Alcohol-Free, but is also gluten-free and many are low in sugar. Their award-winning lager is vegan-friendly. The company does not have a brewery of its own but partners with reputable breweries around the world, who share their brewing values to produce the beer. Big Drop Brewing has secured private funding already and meaningful distribution in the UK and 12 overseas markets. They have also secured off-trade listings in Tesco, Morrisons and Ocado. Half of the investment will be used for Sales & Marketing, 30% for new branding launch and related marketing, 10% for production costs and the remaining 10% for product development.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£617,566
Peckwater Brands (PB) is a company engaged in the growing cloud kitchen/delivery business that runs virtual restaurant brands from the kitchens of existing restaurants. It argues that restaurants need to pay high street rents and staff wages no matter how many diners visit. Nearly 5,000 restaurants have closed in the UK since 2015 due to not being able to fulfil these tasks. PB aims to change this scenario. It helps restaurant partners use their existing staff and kitchen capacity better, and help keep struggling businesses running. The company received more than 10,000 customer orders through Deliveroo and Uber Eats. It witnessed more than £250,000 in customer sales since June 2020 and is spread across London, Manchester, Leeds, and Coventry. PB has launched four brands with four more in the pipeline. It will use the investment to get more partners, launch more brands, and acquire more customers.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£232,208
Wedding Planner is an online wedding-planning marketplace that provides an easy way to plan and book a wedding. Around 20,000 couples are using this platform to plan their dream weddings. Besides being a pre-COVID profitable business in the UK, it is the UK's number one ranked site for 'Wedding Planner' as per Google. The website has been created by combining a digital wedding booking system, curated venues, planning tools, and supplier search options. The platform generates 8,500+ leads for venues and suppliers per quarter and has a registered base of 3,000+ venues and other suppliers. With the investment, the company will use 25% to update their booking system catering to couples and suppliers, 12% in creating new and tested standardised contract templates between the couple and the supplier, 13% in developing a partnership with a wedding insurance provider, 30% as substitution funds for supplier and venue subscriptions frozen during COVID-19, 13% in continuing the platform's growth in Sweden, and 7% in costs associated with fund-raising.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£25,010
Drinkly is an award-winning tech platform that delivers chilled beers, spirits, wines, and more in one hour. The company has increased by 400% in sales since its launch, delivering more than 14,000 orders in Edinburgh, London, & Glasgow. Moreover, it has won the 2019 Online Business of the Year at the Scottish SME Awards. Drinkly has also worked in collaborations with global drinks brands including Asahi, Heineken, and Tito's Vodka, introducing new products to market and gathering invaluable customer insights. With the proceeds, the company will recruit staff and grow sales; it will also invest in and execute its marketing strategy to fuel customer acquisition and retention.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£262,496
HUN Wines sources premium quality wine from Stellenbosch, South Africa, to create the UK's first Fairtrade, wine in a can. It aims to become the largest canned wine brand in the world. The company asserts that its products are fully recyclable and vegan friendly. HUN Wines claims that it is backed by industry titans including James Bailey, current Waitrose CEO, Andy Shaw, previously Brewdog Beer CEO and RedBull MD, Formula racing legend David Coulthard and RedBull executives. The company has successfully canned 300,000 units of its products consisting of flavours like Rosé, Sauvignon Blanc, and Rosé Bubbles (one of the lowest-calorie wines in the UK). It accepted its first order via a Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) site in May 2020, launched nationwide in Tesco Supermarkets in June and expanded onto the e-commerce platform, Amazon, in July. HUN Wines will use 15% of the investment towards staff expenses, 40% towards marketing, 25% towards festival activations and listings, and 20% towards New Product Development (NPD).
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£600,761
Future You Cambridge is a company that sells clinically proven health supplements directly to consumers. Since its launch in 2016, it has sold products to over 100,000 customers. The company's Lactolycopene product received a patent in December 2017 and its Fertility+ product was also covered by the European Journal of Nutrition in a clinical paper and was shown to have resulted in a 40% increase in male fertility. The company's offerings now stand at 24 products, including the popular CBD product and its first product for pets, Curcupet-K9. Additionally, the company won the 2018 Cambridge Service Excellence and Independent High Growth Business of the Year Awards and has 5-star ratings on Trustpilot. They will use the investment to scale up direct advertising campaigns, expand its product range by more than 10 new products, and invest in their website to make it more intuitive.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£655,011
Doc2UK is a specialist UK medical recruitment and candidate support platform. Based in London, the platform places qualified doctors in the National Health Scheme (NHS) roles around the United Kingdom. The British Medical Association (2018) reported that patient care is at risk due to a critical shortage of doctors across multiple medical disciplines. At present, the UK only has 24 medical schools to fill this gap, whilst India, in comparison, has 468 medical schools, with 68,000 doctors graduating each year. Moreover, uncertainty about the status of EU nationals after Brexit, changes to immigration policies, and the impact of changing language testing requirements for international nurses have made this crisis worse. This situation necessitates recruiting doctors from overseas an important endeavour. This is where Doc2UK aims to become a key player and ensure that lack of medical personnel doesn't disrupt any medical services. The company is seeking an investment of up to £300,000 which will be used to develop the platform with more features, expand the team, marketing and sales.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
Withheld
Zvilo aims to become a major challenger bank in the Balkans for Balkan people living in the European Economic Area (EEA). It plans to disrupt the outdated Balkan banking sector and become a contender in an estimated remittances per annum market worth €14 billion. The company asserts that it has procured a letter of intent for a pilot program that would allow it to offer business lending to 800+ Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) and financial services to 45,000+ potential personal banking customers. It has also initiated a licensing application with the Central Bank of Kosovo and partnered with Mastercard as its card partner. Zvilo will use the investment to formalise its application for Supply Chain Finance (SCF) licensing in Kosovo, execute its strategic partnership agreement with its Kosovar partner retailer, prepare for a second fundraising round, and expand its services.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£666,085
ManíLife is an all-natural Argentinian peanut butter without sugar and palm oil roasted by experts and blended in small batches to create an award-winning taste explosion. The company promotes peanut butter to new heights through the crafted method without the use of added ingredients. ManíLife aims to be the UK's no. 1 peanut butter and eventually the ultimate purveyor of peanut. Till date, the company has achieved 2.4x quarterly sales growth from December 2018 to December 2019. Listed in over 270 Waitrose stores, it is the only peanut butter in history to win 3 Great Taste Stars and over 1 million branded mini pots sold through recipe boxes in the last 2 years and 20,000 Instagram followers. ManíLife will use its proceeds for the support of 2 NPD launch, a major packaging change, and content creation trip back to the farm in Argentina.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£296,580
Decimal Factor arranges payments and lends to small and medium-sized businesses with stable funding. The company is working on open-banking-enabled data capture to build a digital campaign with portals, applications and merchant management tools. The company aims to use cloud-based technology to make payments. The funds will be used for marketing, technology, operations and management.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£860,387
