VR “flight simulators” for surgeons? Sesame Street for the iPad age?!

London, 13 January 2020.

Nexus Investments, a division of Harry Hyman’s Nexus Group (best known for being the manager of FTSE 250 company Primary Health Properties PLC), today announces that it has doubled the AUM within its specialist Data, Education and Health EIS investment vehicle in its first year of being operational.

Now with over £2.2m AUM, the Nexus Investments’ Scale-Up Fund (“the Fund”), continues its route to £10m overall, and addresses a large gap in the market by focussing on three of the most exciting areas of change in the world today, Data, Education and Health. It specifically deploys EIS investors’ capital into a portfolio of 8-10+ UK scale-ups with global ambitions.

Exciting UK scale-up brands:

The Fund has already made 8 investments ranging from £100k upwards within the first 12 months, highlights include:

MarcoPolo Learning Inc. – Education - started in New York, now officed in Victoria. An education tech content brand with over $15m of funding behind it, it provides a PhD-designed early learning curriculum including fun games and tools for a global audience of parents to download for their 3-7-year-olds to watch and learn from on tablets and phones (an antidote to endless “Peppa Pig” repeats on YouTube)

Everpress – Digital – officed in Shoreditch. A platform which enables creative artists, influencers, designers, musicians and brands to sell merchandise with their own designs to their social media followers by organising limited edition sales campaigns. Everpress splits campaign profits with the creators (and also “reduces waste in fashion” because of the absence of returns or unwanted merch). Last January’s viral Egg campaign arranged some of its merchandise through Everpress.

iPushPull – Data – based at We Work Moorgate. A real-time data-sharing software business, popular with capital markets and banks. “It doesn’t sound particularly sexy” but helps multiple users work with and edit the same piece of data concurrently and securely, using chat and other messaging services.

Fundamental VR – Health/Education/Digital/Data – “flight simulators for surgeons”, giving medics and hospitals worldwide access to the best Virtual Reality simulations to speed up the training, by combining high fidelity VR with high function haptic (touch) experiences. Customers include healthcare providers such as the Mayo Clinic, who also participated in the recently completed £5m investment round.

All of the above are run from headquarters in London, UK, and make substantial sales all over the developed world. Yet are largely unheralded/unknown and are EIS companies backed by the new Scale-Up Fund.

Case Study

Another stand‐out Fund investment, Medic Spot has received substantial UK local press in recent weeks, with Healthcare and the NHS at the centre of the general election, and NHS commitments made by all parties. Medic Spot has developed a digital health solution which allows doctors to perform remote examinations using equipment placed in pharmacies and operated by the patient. The kit enables GPs to listen to a patient’s heart and lungs remotely, look into their ears and throat and take their vital readings including blood pressure, oxygen levels and body temperature – all without needing to be in the same room. A national survey of patients who have used the service revealed 40 per cent would have gone to accident and emergency if they had not had the ability instead to use Medic Spot. The company has successfully rolled out to 250+ pharmacies to date and has doubled monthly revenues since Nexus’s initial investment in July 2019. The company continues to progress in the private market and has gained significant interest from NHS bodies.

Accolades

Because of its skill in spotting and supporting important businesses like the ones above:

- Nexus Investments was shortlisted as Best Single Sector specialist, and Best Generalist EIS Fund Manager at Investment Week’s Tax Efficiency Awards in December 2019.

- Matthew O’Kane, Managing Director of Nexus Investments, has been recently featured in the Sunday Times Business Section discussing his learnings from more than 20 Angel investments made since 2014.

- Alternatives Platform Wealth Club recently made their interview with Nexus their video of the week.

Why now

The next monthly subscription cut off for the Scale-Up Fund will be on 31 January 2020. Fund details can be found at www.scaleupfund.co.uk.

The fund is available for Wealth Managers and IFAs to access for their advised clients, but also for sophisticated private investors to apply directly.

Matthew O’Kane said: “Following the general election result, we continue to see proof that tomorrow’s greatest global challenges and therefore biggest global opportunities remain in the Data, Education and Health sectors. These are resilient sectors where the UK is respected throughout the world for both innovation and expertise. “

He continued “Nexus Investments are quietly developing a really positive track-record of talent-spotting UK people and products to back in our three core areas, and producing demonstrable results for EIS investors. Having doubled its AUM in just its first year, our Scale-Up Fund should be of interest and relevance to advisors and private EIS investors alike. If the founders succeed, we will succeed, so the stories behind our portfolio should also hopefully be of interest to journalists wanting to report on what is really happening in the spaces of investment, innovation and entrepreneurship, not just in Silicon Valley, but here in London and the UK.”

More details on the portfolio can be found at www.nivl.co.uk

Fund details can be found at www.scaleupfund.co.uk

For press queries or to book our Managing Director for media comment, please do contact the Nexus Team on 0207 104 2068 or at nexusinvestments@nexusgroup.co.uk

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a. EIS

b. tax-efficient investments

c. entrepreneurship

d. pensions

e. venture and angel investing

Some background on Nexus

Nexus is owned by entrepreneur and financier, Harry Hyman, who in 1996 founded, and is still managing director of Primary Health Properties Plc. PHP is a FTSE-250 listed Real Estate Investment Trust with over £2.3bn AUM itself. Nexus also owns Investor Publishing and runs the International Opera Awards. He was featured in the business section of the evening standard recently.

The Fund’s Independent Investment Advisory Committee members include Keith Mansfield, formerly London Chairman of PwC, and Stephen Lawrence, Chairman of Protocol Education. Together with Matthew O’Kane, the Principals and Investment Advisory Committee have invested over £450,000 in the Fund on the same terms as external investors.

Early-stage digital EIS companies that were backed by Nexus some years prior to the Fund, such as www.boclips.com (video clips for classrooms - 2014) and www.pobble.com (literacy app for teachers to teach writing - 2016), are already part of the changing face of education teaching world-wide.

Matthew O’Kane is available for media interviews, or comment, on topics around Education, Health and Data.

(similar to those he recently touched on here in an interview at BBC Parliament’s studios https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLaMcz4l6hk )


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About Nexus Investments

Nexus Investments was founded in 2014 to focus on high-growth entrepreneur-led UK Enterprise Investment Scheme (EIS) investments following successful investments made by the Nexus group over the past 25 years. Nexus is owned by entrepreneur and financier, Harry Hyman, who in 1996 founded, and is still managing director of Primary Health Properties Plc, a FTSE-250 listed Healthcare Real Estate Investment Trust with over £2.4bn AUM itself. Since launch in late 2018, Nexus Investments’ specialist EIS Fund (The Evergreen Investment Scale-Up Fund) has accrued almost £2.7m AUM, and addresses a large gap in the market for private UK investors, by focussing Venture Capital investment on three of the most exciting areas of change in the world today, Ed Tech, HealthTech & Data. Nexus also founded and runs Heath Investor, Education Investor and now Nutrition Investor, which are specialist B2B information, news and events titles for each respective sector.


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