Impact-driven early stage venture capital fund, Eka Ventures, has announced a final close on a £68m ($95m) fund.
This makes it the largest fund of its kind focused on the UK. Investors in the fund include British Business Bank, BSC, Isomer, Guys and St Thomas Foundation, Planet First Partners, Draper Esprit, Snowball and others. These include 24 entrepreneurs, 12 of whom are founders that Eka partners have previously backed.
Eka will invest in consumer companies who are focused on redefining business systems to be more healthy, sustainable and inclusive. This is reflected in Eka’s three investment themes:
Sustainable consumption: reducing emissions, waste and resource use through more efficient, circular consumption models and supply chains.
Consumer healthcare: reducing chronic illness and health inequality through prevention, early detection and low impact treatment methodologies.
Inclusive economy: reducing expenditure poverty and financial exclusion by using technology to reduce the cost to serve in life-essential products.
The fund will focus on the UK, invest early and lead rounds, making investments between £500,000 and £3m.
Eka was founded by Jon Coker, Camilla Dolan and Andrew Richardson. The founding team has a combined 30+ years of experience working in venture capital, backing some of the biggest and most exciting consumer tech companies of the last ten years, such as Gousto, Bloom & Wild, Peak and Elder.
Camilla Dolan, general partner of Eka, said: “When it comes to working with companies, we are clear in our desire for scale, and we will do everything in our power to help the founders we work with achieve their ambitious goals.
“We are looking for entrepreneurs who set the bar for impact driven innovation high and who are focused on fundamentally changing or creating a category, in the same way Tesla has single-handedly propelled the electric vehicle industry forward. We set Eka up to back companies with that level of ambition”.
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