Commitment Impact & ESG

What’s good for people  is good for business.

Positive impact

We care deeply that innovations at the heart of our founders’ businesses have the potential to positively impact people’s lives.

When we review an investment opportunity, we consider its social and environmental impact alongside an assessment of the financial merits of the business. The most attractive companies are those with a sustainable long-term business model with the potential to benefit society.

Read our ESG policy

Cambridge Innovation Capital is a leading Series A investor in the Cambridge ecosystem.

We were born out of a unique relationship with the University of Cambridge and we maintain privileged access to its most inspiring ideas and people in life sciences and deep tech.

Reporting

Reporting on impact and ESG 

There is an overlap between impact and ESG but there is also an important distinction.

Impact reporting tracks the way our businesses create positive impact, particularly through their products and services, and highlights who benefits, and to what extent.

ESG reporting looks at how we identify, mitigate, manage, improve and report on ESG factors. It shows how we educate and support entrepreneurs to develop robust carbon, governance, and diversity, equity and inclusion practices.

Pillars

Guiding principles 

01Responsible investment

We are a signatory of the UN Principles for Responsible Investment, which encourages transparent and evidence-based investment and stewardship. We are also a signatory to the Investing in Women Code, which aims to improve female entrepreneurs' access to tools, resources and finance. Our investment process reviews potential reach and impact of innovations, including numbers of people and likely effect of an innovation on their lives. We consider the environmental impact and low carbon economy benefits and we look at potential employment impacts, including diversity and equality.

02CIC Operations

Within our own operations, we adopt best practices to reduce our carbon footprint and protect natural resources. We operate a social policy aimed at growing and strengthening our human capital, and advancing diversity, equity and inclusion through recruitment and management policies so that our team reflects the cultural mix of our portfolio companies. We also ensure that all of our employees and encourage those of our portfolio companies comply with all relevant laws and regulations, upholding the highest levels of integrity. We provide our portfolio companies with a comprehensive Impact and ESG toolkit to support their own Impact and ESG progress.

03Measurements, transparency and accountability

We track our performance through KPIs, including the number of companies in which we are invested, the amount of capital raised by our portfolio companies and the number of employees in our existing portfolio companies. We use the Impact Management Project (IMP) framework to assess the impact of our investments and the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) to encourage correct behaviours in our portfolio companies.

04Industry collaboration

As an established venture capital organisation, we are active partners in the wider improvement of industry standards and responsibility. We are members of the British Private Equity and Venture Capital Association (BVCA), where our Managing Partner is the Chair of the Venture Capital Committee. We are also on the steering committee of ESG_VC, which helps early stage businesses understand, measure, benchmark and improve their ESG performance.

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Ecosystem

Values

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