The T Bridge mantra is “We back the innovative, the courageous, the risk-takers and the boundary pushers”.
T Bridge Venture Partners is a dynamic and impactful venture company investing in companies. The company was started on the premise of seeking innovative and ground-breaking firms across a number of sectors: renewable energy, proptech, fintech, consumer retail, TMT and agritech.
Started in 2017 by award-winning serial entrepreneur Fope Oluleye who has been building successful companies since he was 21 years old and runs multiple operations through his group of companies across Europe, USA and Africa that sit under the parent umbrella Zenith Guild Group. Since 2011, he has built up a collective set of organisations involved in property, renewable energy and telecoms and he sits within several entrepreneurial communities and associations.
Innovation, ambition and dynamism have been the key actors through Oluleye's endeavours with the underlying theme to excel and build leading and defining companies.
The origins of T Bridge
While building his own companies, Oluleye realised the gap in funding for new-age companies that fitted outside conventional financing due to their business models and positioning to disrupt the status quo. Partnering with family offices, wealth management and climate funds and attracting institutions into co-investing into our chosen sectors that share our enthusiasm for positive change, he believes T Bridge is the radical solution that can bridge the gap.
T Bridge’s mission to invest capital into innovative and creative companies has seen them form a partnership with Brightstar Solar Global to focus on tackling the shortage of electricity infrastructure primarily in sub-Saharan Africa through renewable energy. Renewable energy is a key sector for them as it is still at a nascent stage in terms of potential applications and wide-ranging uses.
The T Bridge approach
T Bridge realises that building successful firms means infusing them through both active collaboration and investment that will ultimately steer them onwards to growth and success. We want to create an ecosystem where our companies can thrive. Fope Oluleye describes a three-step process for identifying businesses that fit T Bridge VP’s investment profile.
- 1. Potential for viable high transformative growth through tackling a key problem in our chosen sectors.
- 2. Founder team with knowledge and understanding of the addressable market to execute its vision.
- 3. The company has a clear identity of where they sit within their sector and how they can impact it.
Most importantly, he recognises that those founders with boundless energy, untiring commitment to reaching their goals, and a deep desire to win as ones most likely to succeed. Through co-creating and fostering an environment that allows portfolio companies to shape their brand identity along with best in class resources T bridge believes they can further accelerate their growth.
The industry
The venture capital industry remains first and foremost an essential source of capital and resources to a great number of burgeoning industry startups seeking to address a number of problems through a variety of sectors and provide active solutions. T Bridge aims to further add value to the industry by focusing on early-stage companies and founders that have enormous potential to disrupt current inefficient norms or create new innovative pathways and create lasting value for potential users and the society as a whole.
T Bridge Renewable Energy Fund – The opportunity
T Bridge takes its vocation seriously, having established the partnership with Brightstar Solar Global for a £500m fund, setting its sights on renewable energy as a medium to help address and positively increase the electricity production to increase productivity and impacting economic growth. The T Bridge renewable energy fund, with its £500m fund, will target Brightstar Solar Global’s mandate of a 1000MW of renewable energy projects by 2022. With a 30MW solar farm already underway in Nigeria, signed with the Nigerian Government to supply electricity and looking at potentially another 300 MW of projects in the country. The company has also signed an MOU with major first-tier banking institution to complement its rooftop strategy for home installations. In addition to home solar systems, utility-scale solar farms, commercial and industrial systems are targets. Energy solutions on a commercial basis providing to agribusiness, mining, healthcare and commercial premises. Whether it is integrated solar systems or stand-alone systems, we aim to use these solutions to positively influence the electricity and energy market in the region.
2020 and beyond
With the present situation of the current adverse fluctuation in the oil market, T Bridge aims to further draw attention to renewable energy as a reliable source of energy production through Brightstar Solar Global to the region and provide much needed electrical production to hospitals, homes and commercial premises.
We have initiated a series of options to implement and create a further pipeline of opportunities to attract further investment from investors that are looking for alternatives to oil, due to the current environment.
The current marketplace provides an opportunity for T Bridge and Brightstar to utilise as the financial incentive of investing in renewable energy becomes as attractive as the oil market.
Over the coming years, we will deliver our goal of 1000MW across our four main operational systems of large-scale utility solar farms, commercial solar systems, distributed mini energy grid systems and rooftop solar systems with a key emphasis on technological innovation and long-term sustainability.
