VCT News
ITN invests in Beringea Portfolio Company Espresso Education
13 January 2005 - Independent Television News (ITN) has made a strategic investment in Beringea portfolio company, Espresso Education, the UK's market leader in the provision of video-rich digital teaching materials to schools. The new partnership will enable Espresso to develop its multi-media service, which is built to support core curriculum requirements, and explore opportunities to market the Espresso concept outside the UK.
The investment will accelerate Espresso's roll-out into the UK education sector, where it has already signed up 4,400 schools for its services, achieving 25% market penetration in primary schools. Since its inception in 1997, Espresso has pioneered the use of media-rich digital teaching materials in UK schools and uses full-screen video, updated weekly to keep pace with major news events, as a key part of its interactive service. The Espresso service, including both the weekly News Service and subject-specific teaching modules, is designed to supplement and enhance classroom lessons and closely follows key strands of the education curriculum. The investment by ITN marks the entrance by a new major media player into the educational software industry, a sector driven and supported by the government's education agenda. The ITN-Espresso agreement involves both a cash investment and wider access for Espresso to the ITN Archive for the next 15 years. Espresso will use the cash to extend its reach into the market and to support and retain existing subscribers through the continual development of high quality products and renewal programmes.
Lewis Bronze, Chief Executive of Espresso and former editor of children's programmes Blue Peter and Newsround, said:
"ITN's investment marks a significant milestone in Espresso's development. Having ITN as a strategic investor and partner will extend our ability to produce quality services for the education market in the UK and, in time, abroad. The partnership will raise the standard for the breadth, depth and quality of curriculum-linked teaching resources that schools can come expect to expect from digital educational resource providers across the industry."
Beringea's ProVen and ProVen Media VCTs first invested in Espresso in 2001 and the company has remained an active investor since then, contributing to its growth. Commenting on the deal, Stuart Veale, Managing Director of Beringea said, "We are very excited by ITN's investment in Espresso. The number of schools subscribing to Espresso services has grown by 400% over the last two years and the partnership with ITN will enable this number of subscribers to grow further whilst raising the industry standard for breadth and depth of video-rich teaching resources. The investment will also enable Espresso to explore opportunities for Espresso services in overseas markets."
Beringea's funds invest in a range of small to medium sized companies with the potential for high growth and strong returns for investors. As well as ProVen and ProVen Media VCTs, Beringea also manages the Global Rights Fund II, which invests in media, brands and intellectual property rights and is currently actively fund raising for its new VCT, ProVen 3 VCT.
About Beringea
Beringea is an international venture capital firm with offices in London and Detroit. In the UK Beringea manages ProVen VCT, ProVen Health VCT, ProVen Growth & Income VCT and Global Rights Fund II. Beringea launched its first VCT in 1996, making it one of the most experienced VCT managers in the UK. ProVen Growth & Income and ProVen VCT are highest performing VCTs of their launch years, respectively, according to www.taxefficientreview.com. For more information please visit www.provenvcts.co.uk.