Angels in The City Programme (AiTC) celebrates its 5th year anniversary

AiTC participants raise circa £174m, creating over 1,000 jobs with 5 exits.

AiTC was founded in October 2011 by LBA and was supported by The City of London Corporation until earlier this year and continues to be supported by Lloyds Bank, The AiTC programme was also launched in Malaysia last year where it is now actively running.

Since the Angels in the City Programme was launched in October 2011, LBA has delivered 17 AiTC company presentation events (first AiTC Company Presentation Event in April 2012) giving 160 City of London and surrounding borough based potentially high growth seed and early stage technology companies the opportunity to present their investment propositions to new and existing private investors in the City.

Of these 160 presenting companies over 57% have raised investment. These companies raised a total of over £174m including significant investment participation from AiTC/LBA investors. The table below breaks down this investment further by sector.

• Total of 160 companies have participated in the AiTC programme over the past 5 years.
• AiTC companies are now employing over 1,000 people (the equivalent of 250 new employees per year)
• Some of 92 companies have raised over £174m with an average of circa £700k raised per company.
• Over 700 private investors have participated in the programme’s series of investor workshops and company presentation events.

Highlights:

• Through LBA’s partnership with the London Co-Investment Fund (LCIF), LCIF has co-invested over £2.2M in over 15 AiTC companies since January 2015 (an average of £120k per company).
• Notable AiTC presenting company include:
  • Hopster raised over £7M since April 2013 including corporate investment from Sony Pictures – 1^st Kid’s growing app in UK.
  • Poq Studios raised £3.97M since April 2012 – A cloud platform for next generation app commerce.
  • Bubbles raised £4.25M since October 2013 – The Personal Shopper that helps you to buy better.
  • Network Locum raised £7.88M since April 2014 – Online network to match GP locums and practices directly.
  • Flatclub raised £11.3M since January 2015 – Enables world-leading organizations to offer outstanding moving support on a budget to their junior employees.
  • Kantox raised £13.6M since April 2012 – A multinational Fintech company offering FX management solutions.
  • Onfido raised £21M since June 2014 – Next-generation identity verification and background checks, helping businesses verify anyone in the world within seconds.
  • Gousto raised £27.8M since February 2013 – Recipe kit company that is disrupting the food industry.
• There have been 5 AITC company exits since the programme commenced in 2011 in the form of:
  • Tedipay acquisition at growth stage (01/12/2014) acquired by Global Travel Ventures
  • Screenburn acquisition at Seed stage (30/06/2015) acquired by Way to Blue
  • Hassle.com ‚Ǩ32m acquisition at venture stage (03/07/2015) acquired by Helping,
  • The Outside View acquisition at seed stage (2015) acquired by Rightmove,
  • Yomp acquisition at venture stage (08/03/2016) acquired by Reward Gateway.

A number of other previously AITC supported companies including Gousto, Onfido, Kantox, Flatclub, Network Locum, Bubbles and Hopster are showing signs of accelerated growth.

Anthony Clarke CEO of LBA comments:

“AiTC has now been successfully operating in London for five years providing new angel investors from the Square Mile an insight of angel investment into London’s seed and early stage potentially high growth SMEs. The outcomes from our programme to date are impressive and in particular the total new investment of £174m raised to date by companies who have participated in AiTC coupled with their creation of over 1000 new jobs in London”.