Praetura Ventures unveils new £10m EIS fund for Northern businesses.
VC Praetura Ventures today announces it is raising money for its second Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) fund, the Praetura EIS 2020 Fund.
The company plans to raise up to £10m to invest in around six to eight early-stage companies predominantly in the North of England.
The announcement follows the VC firm’s record-breaking £15m maiden EIS fundraise less than six months ago.
Since closing its 2019 fund in May this year, Praetura has already invested £7.3m in a number of exciting early-stage businesses, including ecommerce platform Dr Fertility and conversation-as-a-service chatbot provider Futr.
It aims to have fully deployed the Praetura 2019 EIS Fund by November 2019.
The firm said that the 2020 fund will back exciting, early-stage businesses in the North ‘and beyond’ with between £500k and £2m per business, while providing support and guidance to management teams.
David Foreman, managing director at Praetura Ventures, said: “We are delighted by the progress made by the business and by the quality of investments made by the 2019 fund to date. Raising our second fund so quickly after our first demonstrates the opportunity available to us in the North of England, and evidences the scale of demand we’re seeing from investors.”
Jonathan Prescott, Business Development Director at Praetura Ventures, added: “The Praetura EIS 2020 Fund seeks to build on the momentum we’ve gathered over the past 12 months, deploying capital into some of the brightest businesses in the North and beyond.
“Investor appetite has been strong since the close of our previous fundraise. Sandra and Steve joining the team at this exciting period of development will give us the capacity to support growing demand from advisors across the UK.”