The venture capital arm of UKTV, whose channels include Dave, Gold and Yesterday, has provided a £2m investment into Cheshire-based online grocery firm Beelivery.
UKTV has signed a new airtime-for-equity deal with the firm, which was founded in 2015.
The move comes after Greenbank Capital agreed in March to invest £2.5m for an initial 5.883% of Beelivery, subject to the Cheshire firm satisfying certain conditions.
It has also been granted a two-year option to acquire a further 20% of Beelivery for £40m.
Beelivery also agreed to appoint GreenBank as its merchant bank with a view to listing on the Canadian Securities Exchange or other international exchange as soon as possible, and to act as adviser on any future fund raisings.
GreenBank will also appoint one director to the board of Beelivery.
The partnerships with UKTV and Greenbank Capital will enable Beelivery to accelerate its business strategy as it seeks to gain 450,000 new customers over the next two years.
Sheena Amin, director of UKTV Ventures, said: "I've been thoroughly impressed with Beelivery's growth to date and am excited to see how this investment will help the company scale to the next level.
"It's an exciting moment to be launching Beelivery's first ever TV campaign and helping to showcase the amazing service it has to offer customers at a time when it's needed the most.
"With a compelling customer proposition coupled with value for money, I believe Beelivery is well placed to serve customers' needs in a growing segment of the grocery delivery market."
In September 2020, Beelivery said it had recruited 4,000 new roles after sales soared by 300% during the Covid lockdown.
Later that month added that it was to hire 20,000 more staff by Christmas.
Lee Parkinson, co-founder and chief executive of Beelivery, said: "These significant investments will allow us to accelerate our leadership position, continue to increase brand awareness, as well as bring new innovations to our unique offering for our customers.
"The confidence our consumers have shown over the past 12 months has been excellent, and the feedback around 'reliability' from our corporate partners during the pandemic has also been outstanding.
"The feedback is testament to our business model and hardworking community of drivers and support staff."
