London biggest hot spot for impact tech in Europe
London and San Francisco are emerging as two of the world’s leading hubs for impact tech, with latest data from London & Partners and Dealroom.co showing that both cities are attracting large amounts of VC investment into startups addressing one or more of the 17 UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG).
The climate crisis and social inequality are two of the biggest issues that the world has to tackle. This has also been picked up by VC investors who are increasingly putting more money into purpose-driven companies. According to the above data, VC investment into London-based impact tech start-ups has grown by almost 800% (7.8 times) since 2015, compared to 3.1 times in Europe as a whole. And in a year that has been dominated by Covid 19, 2020 is set to be a record year for London’s impact tech companies, who have received $1.2bn in VC investment from January to October, already matching 2019 levels. London’s impact firms have also secured 429 deals between 2015 and 2020, more than any other city globally.
Most interest from investors in London and San Francisco is attracted by Climate change and clean energy solutions, making up over 50% of overall VC investment into impact companies in both cities over the last five years. This demonstrates the booming demand for climate change solutions as startups play a critical role in reaching an inclusive net zero future.
European impact startups saw in 2019 and 2020 more than €11 billion investment. European startups are more impact-focussed than their global peers and Impact Tech is becoming a core part of many European tech ecosystems.
In the Data released by London & Partners and Dealroom it is great to see a variation of Dutch startups mentioned as examples of startups that are working on the UN Sustainable Development Challenges. Companies like Fairphone, VanMoof and The Ocean Cleanup are great examples of Dutch Impact companies. With this new data it is clear that there are lots of opportunities for Dutch Impact tech to expand their journey into the UK. And the Embassy hopes to keep on working with our Northsea Neighbors into growing the importance of Impact Tech even more.
If you want to read more about the Impact Tech data, you can find it here. If you have any questions about the possibilities for scaling into the UK market, please contact our Startup Liaison, Lieke Conijn .