Member Article

London festive focus: Uma Rajah, CapitalRise

With the end of a topsy-turvy year in sight and this year’s festivities about to begin, we’ve asked some of London’s business leaders to reflect on the year gone by and give us an insight into their festive traditions.

In the spotlight today is Uma Rajah, Chief Executive Officer of CapitalRise, to share her thoughts on the year gone by, the year ahead and what’s most likely to get her boogying at this year’s Christmas shindig.

What have been the most notable highlights for your business this year?

After 2 years of preparation, this year’s highlight has undoubtedly been launching our new property investment platform CapitalRise.com in July and raising £1m for our first investment opportunity in just 8 days. This exceeded expectations, but since then, we’ve launched our third project which was fully funded in just 3 working days! It’s been a phenomenal success so far!

It’s been a year of highs and lows, can you tell us some of the biggest challenges your business has faced?

One of our biggest challenges has also been a nice challenge to have faced in that we weren’t quite expecting the investment opportunities on CapitalRise to have been snapped up so quickly. We had to fast-track new investment opportunities onto the platform sooner than we’d originally anticipated so had the team working around the clock on a number of occasions!

If there’s one lesson you’re going to take away from 2016, what is it and why?

Don’t assume you know who your customer is going to be. We started the business thinking the investments we were offering would appeal to older investors, when in fact we’ve had a wide range of people from youngsters in their 20s through to someone in their 80s invest on the platform, all with very different reasons for doing so. It’s been a fascinating journey so far.

Which London business do you most admire right now?

Hotel Chocolat on the basis that it’s taken chocolate to a whole new level of luxury and innovation! They successfully executed an IPO this year in what was a fairly volatile market so I’d say they were one business that’s worthy of my Business of the Year award!

What do you think are the biggest challenges facing businesses in the city next year? Despite the Brexit vote, we’ve still plenty of businesses setting up shop in the capital. What do you think makes the city so special?

As we near the end of 2016, it has been a politically uncertain six months. Despite this, there does appear to be an air of pragmatism across the property sector and the overall impact doesn’t appear to have been as severe as expected. The fundamentals of London remain a big draw for investors, from the culture, language, schools, and infrastructure. Next year will be interesting to see what arises from Britain’s exit from the EU as well as the as yet unknown effect on business from the US president-elect Donald Trump’s policies.

Who’s your business idol, the person you find most inspiring and look up to?

I have a lot of admiration for the founder of Pulitzer prize-winning Huffington Post, Arianna Huffington. She started the business in the US in 2005, sold it to AOL 6 years later, and it’s now gone global with editions across Europe and in Japan.

Everyone has their Christmas day routine, what’s yours?

I’ve got two young children so get woken up quite early with squeals of delight that Santa’s visited and filled their stockings! After some crazed present opening we usually struggle to get the kids to show any interest in food for the rest of the day. We normally spend Christmas with my in-laws in Cornwall and Granny makes an amazing Christmas dinner after which we normally go for a walk on the beach . In the evening we would normally have a light dinner and collapse in front of the TV once the kids are in bed.

And most importantly of all, what’s the cheesy Christmas single that’s most likely to get you on the dancefloor?

It would have to be ‘Fairytale of New York’ by the Pogues and Kirsty McColl - it reminds me of my youth!