Why Unilever Ventures?

Expertise

We have a proven team of business venturing professionals who have helped build businesses during the difficult early stages of development, both in consumer-facing and technology-led environments. The team take a proactive approach to investments, working closely with management teams to help shape the future of the business and build high quality management teams that can deliver successful growth.

Backed by Unilever

We are fully backed by Unilever (www.unilever.com), but work completely independently from its core business, and this provides numerous advantages both to our team and to our portfolio companies. These include:

·          Brands - Unilever has some of the strongest consumer brands in the world. At Unilever Ventures we can access these brands and leverage them behind new technologies or business ventures. Several of our businesses have been developed in this way, including Persil Services, Magnum Chilled Desserts and Dove Spas.

·          Technology - Unilever Ventures has access to Unilever’s impressive R&D labs and technologies. Unilever has over 5000 scientists world-wide, with major research and development facilities in Europe, North America, India and China. A number of portfolio businesses have been created using technologies from within Unilever which have been leveraged in new markets. These include Iota Nanosolutions, Allegra and Insense.

·          Scale – We are able to rapidly scale successful business models using Unilever’s global infrastructure and expertise in supply chain and distribution. This expertise extends geographically across the world and includes access to all major retailers of consumer goods around the world.

Speed

We are dedicated to the rapid development of business opportunities and ideas, and pride ourselves on our speed of decision making. We have freedom to operate as an independent fund and investment decisions are made solely by our Investment Committee, comprising the 3 Directors.