Insider Media Limited

The Growth Investment Network East Midlands (GINEM) is looking at “a combination of routes” to fund the organisation’s future once its main sponsor, the East Midlands Development Agency (Emda), ceases operations next year. Toby Reid, operations manager at GINEM, told Insider the organisation would consider a number of funding options, including introducing more charges for events and seeking private sector sponsorship.

“We will obviously be keeping a close eye on the moves by central government,” said Reid. “We’ll also be helped out by the government-funded business growth coaching service, which was announced by the Business Innovation and Skills (BIS) department recently.”

GINEM is a not-for-profit organisation specialising in helping businesses raise investment and running the Angel Insight investment programme.

Reid said he believed the survival of the organisation was vital as funding becomes ever more important to growth of East Midlands businesses.

“It’s an incredibly important organisation,” he said. “Part of our role is to arrange equity finance and help businesses work out what funding options are available to them – businesses really need that support.”

He added that although the banks were being more cautious with who they were lending money to, they were taking a responsible role in choosing carefully which businesses to invest in.

“They are lending to more established businesses which can provide the security, and have a proven track record of success,” said Reid. “Banks were investing in high-risk companies when they shouldn’t have been, and made some bad mistakes – it’s not their job to lend to risky start-ups with no evidence of success."

Reid also named several sectors that he expected to grow in the coming years.

“There’s the clichés that software, high-tech, online and bio-science companies are going to see huge growth over the next few years, and they should do well.

“But it all depends on the individual business – you have to have a successful product and be ambitious with growth strategy,” he said.