A fifth investor has joined UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), providing matched funding for top small innovators to develop ideas for healthy aging.
The new investor in the healthy aging innovation is London-based Nesta; describing themselves as an “impact investor”, Nesta works on three missions: a fairer start, a healthy life and a sustainable future.
Longevity.Technology: The British Government is a great believer in the role technology can play in improving healthcare in the UK. However, many innovative companies lack the scale to bring real innovation to market. UKRI’s healthy aging investment partnership aims to inject the required capital to help some of the most promising businesses bring their innovations to market; the partnership does this by combining government funding and private investment in business-led research and development, supporting innovators to produce products and services for healthy aging that can be adopted at scale. Vitally, the government contribution de-risks the private sector investment, allowing cutting edge innovation to prosper.
The latest investor addition brings the total funding available under the programme to £18 million of grant funding and £18 million of equity investment available.
Dr Lorraine Morley, UK Lead / Advisor for AgeTech AcceleratorSmall and medium-sized enterprises can apply through one of two new and three original investor partners. In addition to Nesta, these now include: 24 Haymarket, Barclays Ventures, Northstar Ventures and Legal and General.
“NESTA could be a particularly strong ally as they unite the social impact and traditional investment worlds and these two elements need to be aligned if the age tech and healthy ageing market is to thrive…”
Nesta’s Chief Investment Officer, Nathan Elstub, said: “We are delighted to be able to work with UKRI to co-invest in the next generation of companies developing new ways of solving the challenge of ageing well.
“Their grant funding will enable us to support riskier, more cutting-edge approaches to this challenge and will be a perfect match for the patient capital in our impact investment work.”
George MacGinnis, Healthy Ageing Challenge Director at UKRI added: “Nesta’s investment in our partnership programme brings a new dimension to our portfolio with their mission to invest for good. This will broaden the opportunities available to support business growth.
“Nesta brings extensive experience of supporting social entrepreneurs to develop sustainable businesses that address some of the toughest challenges faced by an ageing society.”
We reached out to Dr Lorraine Morley, UK Lead / Advisor for AgeTech Accelerator and member of our own advisory panel for her take on the appointment.
“I am really pleased to hear that NESTA has been selected by UKRI as the latest joint-funding partner to support exciting and cutting-edge age tech businesses,” Dr Morley told us. “NESTA could be a particularly strong ally as they unite the social impact and traditional investment worlds and these two elements need to be aligned if the age tech and healthy ageing market is to thrive”.
