Real Business

Quite a range of businesspeople leading growth in SMEs this week - from smaller local funding in Gateshead to serious high-end VCs backing life sciences businesses. All these individuals are showing that, for the right leaders and teams, there are still opportunities aplenty.

• Jonathan Grant is building on the success of entrepreneurial founders Ashley Unitt and Richard Pickering at Basingstoke-based NewVoiceMedia. Described as a "disruptive" business, it's been backed by Notion Capital.
• “Watch this space. This is rock and roll in the world of baby food.” That's how Susie Willis, founder of  Plum Baby, described her premium food business when it secured first-round funding from Noble Fund Managers Private Equity. Now it's taken on new investment. 
• Non-executive chairman Magne Sveen and chief executive Martin Bett are the two key figures at oil and gas services business Stingray Geophysical, which has just secured £3.15m funding from a group of VC investors.
• Ed Bussey, CEO and founder of Trigga, will become CEO of the combined Clash-Media group. Clash-Media, the Online Lead Generation specialist, today announced the acquisition of Trigga, the ad-matching technology that enhances relevance in online lead generation. Bussey set up Trigga, his third internet start-up, in 2009. Prior to that, he was COO of ZYB, a mobile social networking start-up, which acquired 500,00-plus users online and entered ten new territories within six months before being acquired by Vodafone in 2008. Before that, he was one of the founding team and marketing director of clothing internet retailer figleaves.com (2000),  which he launched into the US in 2004, with more than million customers around the world.
• Yet another gym deal, following Gymbox and others. Peter Roberts, MD of Yorkshire-based Pure Gym, has raised money to back the creation of 24 new low-cost gyms. Roberts, 63, has been working in the leisure industry since 1980.
• Reinnervate is one of the UK's most interesting stem cell businesses, a genuine example of a UK life sciences firm moving into commercial scale. Led by CEO Ashley Cooper, the university spin-out firm "is developing new and innovative ways to manage the growth and function of cultured cells. Its technologies have multiple applications and will be particularly relevant to the control of stem cell differentiation and engineering tissues in vitro." The firm has now raised a new round of funding to enable this. Cooper, who joined reinnervate in September 2007. Ashley has more than 22 years commercial experience spanning animal health, clinical and food diagnostic, medical device and pharmaceutical sectors. More here.
• Former Eurand chief scientific officer Konstantinos Efthymiopoulos (how much would he be worth in Scrabble?) now leads Cambridge-based clinical trials business Funxional Therapeutics, which has raised a sizeable round of funding to develop its anti-inflammatory technologies.
• Enterprising couple Neil and Louise Atkinson, founders of the Gateshead-based HR and employment law specialist Deminos, have bagged £100,000 in  finance from NorthStar Equity Investors. Deminos helps small businesses by providing outsourced HR advice. Neil previously ran map design business Give Way, which he sold.