It’s not too late for EIS

Par Equity

Par Equity will be deploying into 6 companies this tax year. One of the companies is a digital forensics company.

This company’s patented technology helps law enforcement, social media and cloud service providers find and block harmful content, such as child pornography and terrorism. The company’s first product, a digital breathalyzer helps police and counter-terrorism units in the field determine if devices have harmful content within minutes (versus days with incumbent solutions).

The second generation product goes even further and prevents harmful content from being uploaded onto social media sites and file sharing platforms. Well in revenue, with huge addressable market and a highly impressive team with a heavy hitting advisory board. Par is leading a £4.5m investment round into this business.

Closes 12th March 2021.
Deployments before tax year end.

Haatch Ventures

Haatch will be deploying into 5 companies before the end of the tax year. One of the companies is a health technology digital platform that provides a clear personalised analysis of your body’s current state to enable you to lead a healthy lifestyle and help prevent chronic illness. It quite literally has the potential to prevent illness before it happens.

Given the right personalised information people can change their lifestyle to postpone and eliminate chronic illness years before symptoms become detectable. The difference is the ability to link genetic results to lifestyle and functional testing assessments while providing granular personalised recommendations all in one place. No other platform currently offers this.

Close 19th March 2021.
Deployment expected by 2nd April 2021.

Nova

Nova will be deploying into 24 different companies, mostly through seed EIS, but a few in EIS to support some of their growing companies. An example of one of these is a business that will innovate the resell market. Currently there are 9m people in the UK selling goods online, most second hand, and the figure is growing.

Very simply this business lets you know what your unwanted and unused items are worth across the resale market, such as eBay, Amazon, Depop and Facebook. The investee company will tell customers which platform is most appropriate to sell on and which will get you the best price, and allows you to simply upload to your chosen Marketplace.

The company’s founder said, “we are making the second- hand market transparent, so people can sell more and earn more themselves. The market is growing, and we also in trials with charities to help them. We also have eyes on the US market, with 58m people currently selling online.

Next close 19th of March 2021.
Deployment planned before end of tax year.

One of the companies that the Vala EIS Portfolio will be backing is The Sustainability Group, led by Mike Penrose, a former exec at Unicef UK and Save the children International and Alex Smith, an experienced commercial director with significant sustainability experience. The funds will enable the team to expand its operations and develop a highly scalable platform for advising businesses, foundations, financial institutions and family offices on how to make sustainability and social purpose an integral part of their operational and investment approach.

Jasper Smith, founder Vala Capital, says: ‘Sustainability is a core focus at Vala and we hope it will be intrinsic to all business. It is rare that you find a company such as The Sustainability Group that has the skills, experience and technology to become a leader in business transition and we are delighted to support them in this exciting venture.’

Close date for this trance 30th March 2020.
Deployment before end of tax year.