Sophie Capron, communications director at London-based Aduna, explains why the business should win the innovation in funding category of the Guardian Small Business Showcase competition.
Aduna is an Africa-inspired health and beauty brand and social business. We are a high-growth commercial business with a social mission – to create sustainable livelihoods for women in rural Africa. We needed to raise finance, but knew traditional Dragons’ Den-style angel investment wasn’t enough. As a social enterprise, we cannot afford to take on equity investment with investors who aren’t completely committed to social impact. Luckily, we found an unusual group of individuals using their personal wealth to change the world: the Clearly Social Angels – an investor group who only invest in businesses tackling social or environmental challenges.
Like any other investment pitch, we had to sell our business to a packed boardroom and answer probing questions about our commercial potential. However, these investors were asking for social impact returns as well.
We successfully raised £750,000 and now have a small group of passionate investors who share our commitment to ethical and sustainable business practices and are helping us achieve maximum social impact while developing a profitable commercial business too.
Our model is marketing under-utilised natural products to create demand, which we then direct to communities through our smallholder value chain. Since launching in 2012, we have taken our hero product Baobab superfruit from complete obscurity to the UK’s best-selling superfood. The investment we have raised will help us fund our expansion into 15 overseas markets, enabling us to significantly increase demand for our products and create sustainable income for thousands more households in Africa.
All entries which meet the competition criteria are published and our judging panel select a shortlist of the three for each category. Winners are announced at an awards ceremony in summer 2016.
