Maven Capital Partners (“Maven”), one of the UK’s most active investors in growing businesses, has today announced that it has completed a £3 million VCT investment in Bud Systems Limited (“Bud”).
Bristol based Bud provides specialised software as a service to apprenticeship and other training organisations to enable the delivery of high-quality, compliant training whilst improving the visibility of progress and performance. Key to this is Bud’s end to end approach which brings together learners, training providers and employers from enrolment through to reporting and regulatory compliance.
The company was co-founded by Heather Frankham, who has a successful track record in the training sector, having founded, grown and sold the UK’s largest apprenticeship provider, Lifetime Training. Since exiting in 2016, she has supported a number of educational businesses and charities helping them to drive high quality scalable operations most notably Chairing the turnaround of Paragon Skills. Heather remains with Bud as a Non-Executive Director. Bud CEO John Ingram is also an experienced operator in the education sector having scaled and exited businesses in the space, most recently at Pamoja Education which was sold to Faria Education in 2020.
The funding from Maven will be used by Bud to invest further in its core technology platform, while expanding its sales and marketing resources to support growth.
The business operates in a growing market with clear and compelling growth drivers as apprenticeship and other training organisations are subject to ever increasing and more complex regulatory obligations. The demand for Bud’s services has grown year-on-year and there is significant bandwidth to grow further within a market at the heart of addressing the UK skills shortage and with government funding of £2.8 billion per annum.
Luke Matthews, Investment Director at Maven, said: “Bud represents an excellent opportunity for the Maven VCTs to invest in a business that has delivered impressive year-on-year growth and with a demonstrable track record of supporting leading apprenticeship training providers. We can see the significant value that its tech solution offers to clients. It is highly rated and trusted by its client base and the Maven investment will provide the resource Bud needs to continue to provide its high level of service while pursuing sales growth, alongside the expansion of its technology platform.”
John Ingram, CEO of Bud, added: “We are incredibly excited to partner with Maven alongside our founder investors, to continue the company’s rapid growth. These funds will be used to grow the business at scale with significant product enhancements. This will ensure we continue to be the leading end to end apprenticeship training platform while extending into other training provision for our existing and new clients.”
Principals and key advisors to the transaction:
Corporate Finance: Grant Thornton
Legal: Freeths and Burges Salmon
Financial: SME Finance Partners
Commercial: CiL
Tax: K3 Advisory
Management: Confidas People
Insurance: Locktons
Technical: Endava