Wellington angel investor group Movac has formed a partnership with the New Zealand Venture Investment Fund to access up to $4 million of government funding for development of promising young companies.
Movac can obtain up to $500,000 per individual investment under NZVIF’s Seed Co-Investment Fund, in a matched one-to-one investment in promising companies with global and scalable ambitions.
It is NZVIF’s twelfth partnership under SCIF, in which to date there has been $44 million co-invested into 40 companies.
“Establishing this investment partnership will increase the pool of growth capital available to the promising companies which Movac invests into,” said its director, Phil McCaw. “New Zealand produces great ideas and really promising companies. What we, as a country, lack to some extent is capital. What has been pleasing, from both entrepreneurs’ and the industry’s perspective, is the growing level of angel investment in recent years, which is assisting innovative young companies to grow.”
NZVIF chief executive Franceska Banga said angel investors are the mainstay of investment for high growth start-ups in New Zealand and the best source of both advice and capital for entrepreneurs starting down the path of building a global company.
“The more active and strong angel groups we have, like Movac, the greater the pool of capital to build the pipeline of young businesses,” she said. “Angel investing is becoming an important asset class in terms of commercialising New Zealand innovations.”
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