Suir Valley Ventures first investment lists on AIM
Suir Valley Ventures, the entrepreneur-led venture capital fund launched in partnership with Shard Capital Partners LLP in February 2017, is pleased to announce that VR Education Holdings (‘VRE’), its first investment made in March last year, listed on AIM today.
VRE is looking to transform education through the utilisation of virtual reality (‘VR’). It has already won multiple global accolades for its Apollo 11 and Titanic simulations and is working closely with leading institutions including the BBC and Oxford University. VRE will now prioritise the worldwide roll-out of ENGAGE, its leading digital education platform, providing students, educators and corporate trainers with an amazingly visual and realistic alternative to attending bricks and mortar institutes.
As part of the Admission process, VRE, chaired by Richard Cooper, and husband and wife team David and Sandra Whelan, raised £6 million before expenses, through an oversubscribed placing of 60,000,000 new ordinary shares at a placing price of 10p each, implying a market capitalisation of circa £19.3 million on Admission. Suir retains a 7.22% interest in VRE.
Barry Downes, the CIO of Suir Valley Ventures, said, “This is excellent news; I offer my congratulations to David and Sandra and to the whole VRE team for the terrific job they’ve done, growing the company exponentially in just three short years since its inception. This has been a fantastic investment for the fund; we remain committed to finding similar businesses that utilise the best talent in the AR/VR, IoT and FinTech sectors in the future.”