Since 2001, our experienced Capital Ventures team has invested over £6m in exciting, unquoted companies. We have a strong entrepreneurial ethic and invest Howard Family equity in early-stage businesses with dynamic management teams, who show promising potential growth and share our commitment to making lasting social impact. We invest alongside private equity funds, angel networks and private individuals where we feel there is synergy in approach and values. We are always on the look-out for the right opportunities to extend our investments in purposeful businesses.
We take a value-based approach, which aligns with the businesses we invest in:
The Howard Capital side of our business plays a vital, and growing, role within the Howard Group business, alongside our property ventures. As a long-term, patient and responsible investment partner, we provide growth capital funding, strategic and management support to companies seeking purposeful solutions to key social, technological, environmental or humanitarian challenges.
James Roberts, CEO and Co-Founder of mOm, one of our capital ventures, explains why shared values are so important when choosing an investment partner.
Eka, one of our capital ventures, has a thematic focus on health equality and sustainability which is very much aligned with our own responsible investment strategy.
With social impact at its heart, soft prosthetics company Koalaa (one of our capital ventures investments) is revolutionising access to prosthetics to a global community of people with limb difference.
Knowledge Intensive
Early-stage to mid-size knowledge intensive businesses that rely on smart people developing technology based solutions to key technological, environmental, social or humanitarian challenges.
Technology
Technology businesses that have a unique and compelling solution which makes a difference to peoples lives. We are also keen to explore opportunities in prop-tech given our core competency within this industry sector.
Medical Technology
Medical technology businesses that are focused on innovative developments with far reaching humanitarian benefits. We are particularly keen to invest in companies that are driving solutions that have wider social accessibility at their core.
“The purpose of business is not to produce profit; the purpose of business is to produce profitable solutions to problems of people and planet and in the process it produces profit."
Colin Mayer, the Peter Moores Professor of Management Studies at the Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford.
This sentiment captures how we view the role of financial responsibility - strong financial management and discipline, as a key tenet and obligation sitting alongside social and environmental considerations in building a business that truly has purpose.
To us, social value means making sure that everything we do - both within our property and capital ventures divisions - is not looked at just through the lens of what benefit it has to our company, but also considers the communities and wider economy in which the solution sits; whilst also minimising the impact it has on the environment. Social value creation, both for us and the companies we invest in, is a fundamental part of how we measure success in the long term.
Howard Group
93 Regent Street
Cambridge
CB2 1AW
01223 312 910
