Firm look to expand after £3.5m investment boost
More jobs could be created in Rutherglen later this year after a vegan food company secured significant additional funding.
TheVeganKind, based in Rutherglen, are now eyeing up an expansion thanks to £3.5m of support from London-based, Literacy Capital.
The vegan goods delivery company was started by Scott and Karris McCulloch in 2013 from their flat, after they became frustrated at the lack of options available on the high street for vegans, and has developed into an online supermarket in 2016.
Now they employ 70 people and have seen their business soar as demand for plant-based products continues to rise.
Scott told the Reformer that the funding boost means the company can now plan ahead, which could be good news for the local area as a whole.
He said: “We’re ambitious as a business and what this financing does is let us look forwards at what we can invest in.
“We are planning to invest in marketing, invest in awareness and also invest in people. At the moment this is one of our quieter times of the year, but as the year goes on and we start getting into October and November, the aim will be hopefully to start creating new jobs in Rutherglen.”
The company moved to their 35,000 sg feet warehouse on Ashton Road last year and their website averages 200,000 visits a month as the market for plant based products continues to boom.
Scott added: “We’ve been working on securing the funding since last September and we’re delighted.
“With the pandemic there has been extra funding costs we’ve had to consider, just through things like PPE, so it secures that and lets us plan ahead more.
“More and more people are having plant-based meals now, there was a study that recently revealed 47 per cent of people have plant-based food as part of their diet, and you will see more people gravitate from there to being vegan. We have lots of exciting developments in the works such as TVK Health, which is all about how to eat healthily.
There’s a lot of room to grow in.”
PwC advised TheVeganKind on the raise through its early stage division PwC Raise | Ventures.
Jason Cohen, manager and PwC Raise | Ventures lead for Scotland, said: “We are delighted to have worked with Scott, Karris, Kate and the team at TheVeganKind on this transformational deal.
“TheVeganKind is an inspirational success story, one of true entrepreneurship and reflects growing levels of venture capital investment in recent years and strong investor appetite within our local market”.