The second city has produced the most start-ups in the country outside London for seven consecutive years. After decades of industrial decline that saw the closure of the Rover plant at Longbridge and the contentious sale of Bournville-based Cadbury’s to American food giant Mondelez, Birmingham is booming. It has become the youngest city in Europe, with five universities, and almost 40% of inhabitants under the age of 25, while it is attracting workers with its low house prices and high quality of life.
HSBC has shifted its UK headquarters to Birmingham, while the accountancy giant PwC and HM Revenue & Customs are also moving into the Centenary Square area, bringing an extra 7,000 jobs. The influx of banks and professional services firms has spawned the growth of financial technology start-ups. Other leading sectors include the creative industries — in part spurred by the success of Brummie gang drama series Peaky Blinders — and life sciences, with Birmingham University set to open a science park to help commercialise academic and clinical research.
The redeveloped New Street station is a gleaming retail hub, compared with the brutalist eyesore that occupied the terminus for almost 50 years, while Birmingham stands to benefit from the HS2 railway line — should it go ahead — and it will host the 2022 Commonwealth Games. The “city of a thousand trades” is well set to prosper over the next decade.
WHO TO WATCH
START-UPS
School of Code
This Digbeth-based start-up runs free 16-week boot camps for wannabe technology stars, and three cohorts have already completed its programme. Founder Chris Meah, 31, launched it to boost diversity on computer courses, with graduates including a stay-at-home mother and a geology student. He charges a fee to companies that employ his coders, and has also won sponsorship from the West Midlands Combined Authority.
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Shopper.com
This company helps members find discount codes for their online shopping at more than 42,000 stores including Amazon, Asos and Marks & Spencer. Under founders Sonu Bubna and Manoj Krishnapillai, it claims to save users about 15% on their online shopping bills.
Fluence World
Founders David and Jennifer Hore have created an artificial intelligence programme that helps financial and professional services firms improve their quality assurance processes by automatically reviewing documents. Based in the Jewellery Quarter, it has won investment from the Bristol Private Equity Club and Ufi Charitable Trust.
SCALE-UPS
Click Travel
Click Travel makes corporate travel easier and cheaper for customers ranging from TalkTalk and Premier Inn owner Whitbread to Land Securities and the British Heart Foundation, which use its website to book tickets and hotels, find deals and manage their travel budgets. It made more than £237m sales last year.
Oxbridge Learning
This distance-learning provider has helped more than 60,000 pupils achieve their education goals by teaching A-levels and GCSEs, as well as courses ranging from accountancy and book-keeping to writing and journalism. Founder Matt Jones, 38, has won a succession of local business awards.
Gymshark
Based just outside Birmingham, in a 42,000 sq ft hangar off the M42 in Solihull, Gymshark has become a sportswear empire driven by its popularity among the under-25s. Sales hit £179.5m last year, just seven years after founder Ben Francis, 27, started with a sewing machine in his parents’ garage.
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INFLUENCERS
Andy Street
The former John Lewis boss has been the Conservative mayor of the West Midlands since May 2017, and has become one of the region’s most high-profile — and energetic — business cheerleaders. Street, 56, who grew up in Solihull, was head of the local enterprise partnership for five years while still running the department store chain, and has helped spearhead efforts to bring HS2 and the Commonwealth Games to the West Midlands.
Joel Blake
Blake, 39, has become a leading player and mentor in the Birmingham tech scene after founding advisory firm Cultiv8 Solutions. Most recently he founded artificial intelligence start-up Gfax Exchange, which monitors business performance for lenders and wealth managers.
Paul Bassi
A prominent property investor, Bassi, 57, is the founder of Real Estate Investors, a listed vehicle that owns swathes of prime property in the city. He has helped lead the revival of the centre of Birmingham.
INSPIRATIONS
Sir Peter Rigby
Rigby’s entrepreneurial career started in 1975, when he turned a £2,000 investment into IT services business Specialist Computer Centres. His giant Rigby Group has grown to have interests in aviation, airports, financial services, IT, hotels and property, employing 8,500 staff in 20 countries. Rigby, 76, has amassed a £660m fortune, according to The Sunday Times Rich List.
Jo Bradwell
Bradwell founded medical diagnostics pioneer Binding Site, which develops specialist blood tests for diagnosing and monitoring bone marrow cancers and other immune system disorders, in 1983. After selling a majority stake to private equity firm Nordic Capital in 2011, Bradwell, 74, donated £15m to Birmingham University to help set up an institute of forestry research.
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Richard Harpin
The founder of emergency repairs provider HomeServe has turned a plumbing firm backed by a local water company into a FTSE 250 stalwart. Harpin, 55, who is worth £531m according to The Sunday Times Rich List, has also launched Growth Partner, a long-term investor in start-ups.
WHERE TO WATCH
NEIGHBOURHOODS
Digbeth
The inner-city industrial area has become a hipster hub, with cafes, independent shops, cinemas and arts venues alongside start-ups in the creative industries and social enterprise.
Birmingham Science Park, Aston
Home to the city’s innovation quarter, the Birmingham Science Park helps foster partnerships between academia and business. It is made up of two campuses: the Innovation Birmingham campus and the Science & Technology campus.
Longbridge Technology Park and Innovation Centre
Based on the former MG Rover site, this £100m development is home to nearly 60 technology start-ups and is owned by the FTSE 250 regeneration specialists St Modwen.
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NETWORKS
The Silicon Canal group
The name is a reference to the fact that there are more miles of canal in the second city than there are in Venice. It has become the voice of the local tech community and fosters an “ecosystem” by hosting social events and awards ceremonies.
Tech Wednesday
This group has a regular meeting on the third Wednesday of every month, while the Birmingham Entrepreneurs Meetup is an informal gathering of founders seeking advice or to build a network.
INCUBATORS
Innovation Birmingham campus
More than 170 start-ups have raised £56m in funding at the campus. Previously owned by Birmingham city council, it is part of property developer Bruntwood.
Velocity
The Investment Association has launched Velocity, a new incubator for fintech start-ups, alongside the mutual Wesleyan this year. It is providing 10 start-ups with free co-working space in the city centre.
ACCELERATORS
Natwest Accelerator
This group has helped more than 300 businesses scale up since 2018. It offers courses ranging from eight weeks to six months with free office space, coaching and access to business mentors.
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Forward Accelerator
The Birmingham Enterprise Community has launched the programme with University College Birmingham for student and graduate entrepreneurs. The six-month programme was launched last September and offers coaching, virtual resources, workshops and training.
SHARED WORKSPACES
The Custard Factory
The former home of Bird’s Custard in Digbeth is one of the largest hubs for digital media and creative businesses in Birmingham. The estate is home to about 400 companies.
Alpha Works
This space is in the heart of the city, across three floors of the iconic Alpha building. Entrepreneurs can rent “hot desks”, co-working spaces or private offices, and Alpha Works also helps businesses moving into the region.
WHERE TO GET MONEY
Equity funding for start-ups in Birmingham has long lagged behind rival cities, though small business investor BGF opened an office near the Bullring in 2011, when the then Business Growth Fund was founded, and LDC, the private equity arm of Lloyds Bank, has its Midlands base in Birmingham. However, a group of investors — led by Rupert Lyle and Sharonjit Clare — have established a new venture capital outfit called The Ark to foster greater co-operation between entrepreneurs and local angel investors, with the support of the Greater Birmingham and Solihull local enterprise partnership.
RECENT EXITS
Enterprise internet telephone provider Nimvelo was acquired by Bristol-based telecoms group Simwood. Founded in 1969, Cannock-based ATP Group remanufactures car transmissions. It was bought by Oklahoma’s ATC Drivetrain last May. Nick Holzherr, a former finalist in The Apprentice, built food technology start-up Whisk to make use of the “internet of things”. It was sold to South Korean technology giant Samsung last March.
RECENT FUNDRAISINGS
Tonik Energy, a renewable energy supplier with more than 100,000 members, raised £10m from the Japanese giant Mitsui to expand its business. Voxpopme, which has developed an app to provide video and data analytics so companies can survey customers and record responses, raised £7.5m in a round led by Mercia Asset Management. A maker of fully recyclable and biodegradable plastics, Aquapak Polymers raised £6m last year.
