Innovate UK Innovation Loans, Investor Partnerships and Support

Are you looking for funding to commercialise your innovation? Do you need help to navigate the funding maze?

You can meet the experts who can guide you on Monday 20 June!

Join at Innovation Centre, Knowledge Gateway, Colchester, Essex CO4 3ZQ – 3.00pm to 5.30pm including networking and refreshments. Spaces for are capped at 50 delegates so make sure to secure your place now!

Innovation loans from Innovate UK provide flexible and patient capital to support highly innovative late-stage research and development (R&D) projects with the best potential for the future. They can take your ground-breaking idea further than grant funding alone – though Innovate UK offers that too!

Innovation loans of between £100,000 and £2 million are available to SMEs to fund up to 100% of eligible R&D costs where you can demonstrate a clear route to commercial success and suitability to take on a loan commitment. Loans have a maximum term of 7 years, an interest rate of 7.4% (with partial deferral during the project period) and a structure designed to meet the needs of innovative businesses.

The innovation loans programme has moved from a pilot to a £150m programme to be delivered over the coming 3 years. The interim evaluation of the pilot showed that innovation loans allowed successful businesses to pursue new product development and commercialisation activities, embark on more risky projects, invest in new R&D-related equipment, develop skills and innovation capacity and raise additional investment.

Investor partnerships from Innovate UK offer a package of public sector grant funding and private equity investment to support R&D and accelerate the process of commercialisation. This programme is aimed at SMEs that seek capital at the same time as a grant so that their R&D project is fully funded and they have adequate capital to move forward on their journey to growth at scale.

Investor partnership programmes to date have supported over 150 businesses, with £38m in committed grant funding aligning with over £100m in investment from nearly 30 investor partners. Businesses have gone on to raise over £300m in follow-on investment.

Nigel Walker, Deputy Director Lending & Investor Partnerships, and Hemaxi Bhatt, Programme Lead – Innovation Loans, will give an update on the current Innovation Loans Future Economy Competition that is open to high growth UK SMEs and plans for further investor partnerships competitions.

Innovate UK EDGE is Innovate UK’s fully funded Business Growth service. Our Innovation & Growth Specialists support ambitious innovative businesses, with strong commercial potential to significantly improve the UK economy, to accelerate their growth and achieve scale.

Arun Muthirulan, Lead Innovation & Growth Specialist, will guide us through the various funding options available to innovative businesses on their journey to commercialisation. He will lead us through the steps a business needs to take to make sure it is investment ready. And will highlight how Innovate UK EDGE support can help a business be investment ready to apply for an Innovation Loan or seek equity investment.

There’ll be plenty of opportunity for you to pose your questions to the panel and to network.

Nigel Walker, Deputy Director, Lending & Investor Partnerships, Innovate UK

Nigel is part of the team delivering Innovate UK’s innovation loans and investor partnerships programmes. He is a director and member of the credit committee of Innovate UK Loans Ltd. Prior to this role, he headed the organisation’s support for innovative SMEs in gaining access to private sector capital to accelerate the journey from concept to commercialisation.

Nigel has a background in corporate finance, having qualified as a chartered accountant with Ernst & Whinney and spent over 10 years at each of Deutsche Bank and GE Capital. At GE, he established the European ‘Access GE’ programme, advising, coaching and mentoring management teams of businesses owned by private equity firms on operational excellence, acquisition integration, strategy development and leadership.

Hemaxi Bhatt, Programme Lead – Innovation Loans, Innovate UK

Hemaxi’s passion for supporting businesses to succeed goes back a long way. The reason – she likes seeing the fantastic accomplishments as business owners grow as individuals and develop their businesses.

She could see the challenges that innovative organisations were facing in finding funding and investment to support them with R&D, commercialisation and beyond, so she has been fortunate enough to combine her 20 year financial background, working for NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland, with working closely on government-funded grant and loan support programmes for businesses to assist those organisations with their paths to success. She expresses how impressed she has been by the R&D and innovations taking place in a variety of industries, from automotive, aerospace, healthcare, and manufacturing, which she believes would not be able to succeed without the help of outside investors and the external support available to them. Her current position as Programme Lead, Innovation Loans at Innovate UK fits in so well with her ethos of supporting innovative business.

Howard Partridge, Regional Manager, East of England, Innovate UK

Howard works with stakeholders, particularly the Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) and the Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority, to align our respective strategies for innovation and to understand and highlight the innovation strengths of the region. He is currently working on the Business Basics Fund and plans for other activities that seek to accelerate the diffusion of innovations and the adoptions of technologies and best practice that will increase business productivity..

Howard has previously worked to develop and run Innovate UK’s SME Growth Programme, that provided coaching, mentoring and entrepreneurial skills support to the smaller businesses that we funded. That programme has now been integrated into Innovate UK EDGE.

Arun Muthirulan, Lead Innovation and Growth Specialist, Innovate UK EDGE

Arun is an experienced techno-commercial professional with his own entrepreneurial and corporate experience. His skills cover business development, strategy, tech commercialisation, innovation, entrepreneurship, and project management. He has advised 100+ firms to take new products and services based on novel technology to market. Arun works at the CxO/senior management level, and has sector experience in Smart Grids, Oil & Gas, Aerospace and Defence, Digital Media, Telecoms, Healthtech and Biotech.

Arun is well connected to the local Angel networks and regularly mentors and advises entrepreneurs and founders from the Judge Business School and the University of Cambridge on funding and finance. Arun has an MBA from the Judge Business School, specialising in Strategy and Entrepreneurship and a first degree in Computer Science and Electronics Engineering from India.

Helen Turton, Client Engagement & Ecosystem Relationship Manager, Innovate UK EDGE

Helen worked for several years in Public Relations and Marketing predominantly for travel, property and tv production clients in London. She has worked on business support programmes such as the Leadership & Management Advisory Service, supporting business owners to improve their L&M skills, so they lead more successful businesses; the Growth Accelerator programme helping businesses identify and overcome their barriers to growth; and as Regional Manager for Pera Technology helping companies to apply for Innovate UK and Horizon 2020 R&D grant funding.

Helen has worked with Innovate UK since 2017 in an Innovation Adviser and client acquisition capacity, and now heads up a team that supports clients to onboard for Innovate UK EDGE support. She plays a key role in engaging with stakeholders across the East of England ecosystem, and beyond, to identify and leverage collaborative opportunities to benefit ambitious, innovative businesses with strong commercial potential to significantly improve the UK economy, to accelerate their growth and achieve scale.