Video-based parenting website Channel Mum secures £3.5m fund from Downing Ventures

Channel Mum, the UK parenting hub, has secured £3.5m funding led by London-based venture capital firm Downing Ventures alongside NVM.

Channel Mum was founded in 2015 by Siobhan Freegard OBE, who has become one of the UK’s leading authorities in parenting, having previously founded and sold Netmums.com.

Channel Mum has already produced a variety of award-winning content, having received accolades at the 2018 Digiday Awards Europe for Content Marketer of the Year and Best Branded Content Series for its ‘Power of Frozen’ campaign with Iceland.

Channel Mum also produces educational video content to help millennial mums navigate through parenthood.

In addition to Iceland, the site has also gained traction with other parenting and ‘fast moving consumer goods’, or FMCG, brands including Cadburys, Disney and McDonalds. The community is free to join.

Siobhan Freegard, CEO of Channel Mum, commented: “As an all-female led team in the fast-developing digital sector, we needed an investment partner who could visualise the bigger picture and realise that to engage the Millennial and Gen Z market, you need to do good while doing good business.

“Downing fulfilled all our criteria and more and are already adding value to the company. I expect the partnership to be fruitful for both firms.”

Richard Lewis, investment director at Downing Ventures, added: “We believe Channel Mum is well-placed to scale its platform over the next three years and take its award-winning content to mums across the UK.

“A huge part of Channel Mum’s success so far is thanks to its team’s unparalleled understanding of the type of content that engages the mums of today, something which gives us great confidence about the long-term future of the business.”

Downing Ventures is an evergreen fund investing in seed to series A companies and specialises in a wide variety of technology sectors, including consumer internet and mobile, financial technology and health technology.

As of March 2018, Downing Ventures has a portfolio of 45 companies. The fund works alongside a number of investment partners and accelerator programmes and incubators, including the London Co-Investment Fund.