About

What is a venture builder?

Blenheim Chalcot is a leading global venture builder. We build product-led digital businesses which transform industries. We are primarily focused on enterprise Software as a Service (SaaS) products, powered by Generative AI.

We target industries which are exposed to market, regulatory or technology discontinuity and have predominantly built businesses across: 

  • FinTech, with an emphasis on payments and lending 
  • EdTech, including corporate L&D and regulated assessment 
  • Media and marketing, including Sports and Music
  • Public Services and Healthtech 

 

Over the last 25 years, we have built over 60 businesses. The Blenheim Chalcot portfolio currently comprises 30 businesses, ranging from early-stage start-ups to mature market leaders.  

Blenheim Chalcot has three global hubs. Portfolio companies are headquartered from our innovation ecosystem at Scale Space in London. Our Mumbai campuses provide unparalleled scaling capability and technical expertise. And our US operation powers Go-To-Market across North America.  

 

From the ground up 

As a venture builder, Blenheim Chalcot builds businesses from the ground up. This means we identify new market opportunities in our specific areas of domain expertise, assemble outstanding leadership teams, and deliver ‘hands on’ services from conception to scale, maturity and exit.  This differs significantly from the traditional venture capital model in which investors typically distribute capital to founding teams and expect one in ten investments to be successful. Through our venture building model, Blenheim Chalcot gives its ventures an unfair advantage.  

Hands-on support and services 

Venture Building Services delivered from Blenheim Chalcot’s global hubs span all critical aspects of business operations including: technology, legal, tax, investment, finance, marketing, talent, HR, L&D, and property. These services free up leadership teams to focus on what is truly unique to them: their market, their customers, and their products. This approach dramatically improves the speed at which ventures can build a valuable product and successfully take it to market.  

Commercial model incentivising sustained success 

Blenheim Chalcot takes a majority stake in all of its businesses, from the outset. This allows businesses to stay nimble, unencumbered by board bureaucracy. Ventures can continuously refine their approach to ensure their products are truly addressing customer needs. And all parties are materially incentivised by long-term success.  

Discover our ventures:

How we do it?

Our approach

We’re run by entrepreneurs.
Our Co-Founders are, first and foremost, entrepreneurs. Since 1998, they have built more than 60 businesses across a range of markets and remain deeply involved with every venture at every stage. Outside the boardroom they share their experience, personal support, and global networks.  

We create the right environment for growth
Our ventures and teams are co-located at Scale Space in London and at our Mumbai offices. These shared spaces are designed to fuel collaboration and innovation, at pace. Knowledge, networks and experience are continuously shared, with all the necessary support under one roof. 

We invest in talent
Realising the potential of a business starts with seeing the potential in people. We develop talent by matching the right people with the right ventures and giving them the freedom to succeed. We also invest deeply in learning and development, powered by our training company RedTeam. Learn more about our career programmes, including the Graduate, Pioneer and Portfolio Impact Manager opportunities. 

We are disciplined about entrepreneurship 

Through our Emerging Venture Opportunity (EVO) programme we systematically progress great ideas into products which customers love. And we are rigorous about innovation, ensuring our ventures can capitalize on the latest insights from the Blenheim Chalcot Centre for GenAI Innovation and our Research & Development activity in Mumbai. 

We are patient
When we believe in an idea, a business or a person, we persevere, going through as many iterations as needed to identify how it will fulfil its potential. We don’t have ‘fund schedules’ so we’ll keep our money invested and keep investing our money, as long as it takes. 

Blenheim Chalcot Leadership

Co-Founders

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Manoj Badale
Co-Founder
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Manoj Badale is Co-Founder of Blenheim Chalcot, the UK’s leading digital venture builder. Blenheim Chalcot traces its roots back to netdecisions which Manoj and business partner Charles Mindenhall co-founded back in 1998.

Manoj is actively involved with many of the BC companies. Manoj is also the Chairman of HRH The Prince of Wales' British Asian Trust. He was also Chairman of Operation Smile UK for over ten years, and a founding Trustee of the Technology Trust. Manoj is also the lead investor and owner of the Rajasthan Royals.

Manoj has an MA in economics from Emmanuel College, Cambridge University and was formerly a partner at Monitor Company where he spent time in the UK, Germany and India.

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Charles Mindenhall
Co-Founder
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Charles Mindenhall is Co-Founder of Blenheim Chalcot, the UK’s leading digital venture builder, and has built over 40 companies since 1998.

Charles is the Chair of OnSide Youth Zones nationally and the Chair of the Future Youth Zone in Barking and Dagenham, as well as being a trustee of Mental Health Innovations (which was spun off from the Royal Foundation following the Heads Together programme).

Charles has a MA in Philosophy and Psychology from Christ Church, Oxford University, and was formerly at Monitor Company.

Senior Team

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Jyoti Cushion
Chief Legal and Compliance Officer
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Jyoti is Chief Legal and Compliance Officer at Blenheim Chalcot providing advice & guidance to the portfolio companies and communicating the risks and legal issues, involved in any decision, to management.

Prior to joining central Blenheim Chalcot, Jyoti spent ten years as General Legal Counsel at TDX Group (a Blenheim Chalcot company) until it was sold to Equifax in 2014.

Prior to this Jyoti was in private practice specialising in commercial litigation.

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Patrick Abbotts
Global Chief Financial Officer
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Patrick is the Global Chief Financial Officer at Blenheim Chalcot and is responsible for leading, overseeing and advising on the financial management of BC’s central operations and several ventures and entities across the portfolio.

Prior to joining Blenheim Chalcot, Patrick was Group CFO at BIMA MILVIK, an Allianz-backed insurance and teledoctor scale-up. Prior to this, he worked in various Finance roles at RateSetter, Virgin Money and Barclays Capital.

Patrick is a qualified CIMA Management Accountant and holds a BSc in Economics & Finance from The University of York.

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Melanie Szalkiewicz
Managing Director of Investments
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Melanie is the Managing Director of Investments, supporting portfolio businesses with their equity and debt fundraisings and M&A activity, monitoring performance across the portfolio. As CEO of Blenheim Chalcot's regulated entity, BCI Finance Limited, she manages HNW investment funds.

Prior to joining Blenheim Chalcot, Melanie spent 12 years in M&A at GCA Altium, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and Credit Lyonnais advising leading VCs and PE firms in the UK, the US, Argentina and Russia. She then joined a London-based marketplace start-up as CFO and also acted as a consultant to a successful mid-market private equity project in the UK.

Melanie studied at EdHEC Grande École in France and Stockholm School of Economics in Sweden.

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Manoj Bithal
Head of Tax
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Manoj is the Head of Family Office and Tax at Blenheim Chalcot, overseeing the tax structuring of investments and executive compensation plans for our ventures and their executives at each stage of their growth cycle.

Prior to joining Blenheim Chalcot, Manoj qualified as a Chartered Accountant with Ernst & Young within their Investment Management Group and then spent a couple of years with a global FMCG business within their European HQ.

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Girish Manik
CEO & Director BC India
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Girish currently serves as the director of Blenheim Chalcot India. He is primarily responsible for strategic direction, stakeholder management and business development.

Prior to Blenheim Chalcot, Girish worked for telecom companies Vodafone & Alltel.

Girish holds a Masters in Business Administration (Marketing).

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Lee Arthur
General Manager, US
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Lee Arthur is the General Manager of Blenheim Chalcot North America based in Tampa and responsible for supporting research, market entry and scaling of portfolio businesses in the US.

Formerly Lee was the CEO of the New York Institute of Finance, which he sold successfully in 2017. Lee also founded and was CEO of Streetbroacast, a UK outdoor advertising company.

He has also held positions as Head of Business Development at Dow Jones in New York and the Financial Times in London.

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Jasper Joyce
Director of People Acceleration
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Jasper leads People operations at BC. This includes leading the Red Team (BC's dedicated training organisation) and the BC Centre for Generative AI Innovation, as well as HR operations. Jasper also supports BC's Edtech portfolio, including being Chair of the Board at Avado.

Before joining Blenheim Chalcot, Jasper was part of the founding team of a new university. Prior to this he was a strategy consultant working across education and adjacent sectors.

Jasper studied at Cambridge University.

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Robert Shilston
Global Chief Technology Officer
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Robert Shilston is the Global Chief Technology Officer at Blenheim Chalcot, providing a mixture of strategic and hands-on advice & guidance to the portfolio companies in all aspects of technology, product development, infrastructure and risk management.  

Formerly Rob was the Director of Engineering at the Financial Times, which he joined following the successful acquisition of his web development business in 2011.  At the FT, he and his team won industry awards ranging from devops transformation through mobile and web product development.

Rob has a PhD from UCL, is a Chartered Engineer and Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. 

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Sam Clark
Chief of Staff
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Sam is Chief of Staff at Blenheim Chalcot and is responsible for the business operations across the central VBS services, supporting our Emerging Venture Opportunities unit and facilitating collaboration across the portfolio to drive their growth.

Joining Blenheim Chalcot in 2014, Sam supported co-founder Manoj Badale and later worked in Special Projects.

Sam has a BSc in Geography and a MA in Law.

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Mairi-Claire Tay
Managing Director of Talent
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Mairi is Managing Director of Talent at Blenheim Chalcot, which is responsible for the recruitment of the VBS team in the UK, US and South Africa, programme recruitment on behalf of the portfolio businesses and the management of relationships with key university partners and recruitment vendors.

Mairi started her career in recruitment in 2013 at a small startup agency and focused on recruiting data and analytic departments into the News Media industry and Publishing firms. Mairi joined Blenheim Chalcot in 2018 as a Senior Talent Partner.

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Dougie Reid
Chief Information and Security Officer
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Dougie is an IT Professional with over 20 years’ worth of experience working with Local Government Authorities, Private Health Care Providers, and a range of Private Sector organisations from start-ups to large enterprises.

Dougie has worked across all IT disciplines, including Application Support and Development, Service Management, Networking, Server Infrastructure, Solution Architecture and Cloud Solutions. More recently he has focused upon implementing ISO27001 within a number organisations.

Dougie is a qualified GDPR practitioner and provides a Data Protection Officer as a Service across the Blenheim Chalcot portfolio.

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Darius Toomer
Head of Portfolio Transformation
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Darius is the Head of Portfolio Transformation at Blenheim Chalcot, overseeing major transformation projects for BC and our ventures. The Portfolio Transformation team is responsible for high-priority strategy & operations initiatives across the portfolio to support growth & value creation, with a focus on Generative AI. Darius is also currently leading Agilisys’ new business unit, Agilisys Product.

Prior to joining Blenheim Chalcot, Darius spent 5+ years as a management consultant, most recently with a focus on Private Equity M&A and transformation projects with Alvarez & Marsal.

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Xenia Levina
Head of Emerging Venture Opportunities
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Xenia is the Head of Emerging Venture Opportunities at Blenheim Chalcot, leading strategic initiatives focused on the incubation of new venture opportunities across the portfolio. Formerly Xenia served as Chief of Staff to Blenheim Chalcot's Founding Partner.

Prior to joining Blenheim Chalcot, Xenia worked as an independent artist and read History of Art at the University of Oxford.

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Josie Filmer
Director of Special Projects
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Josie leads the Special Projects team at Blenheim Chalcot, which provide strategic and operating capabilities across the portfolio to accelerate ventures’ growth and development.

Before joining Blenheim Chalcot she set up and managed Positive Families Partnership, a public sector start-up delivering family therapy, having previously worked for its investor, Bridges Fund Management.

She qualified as a corporate lawyer at global law firm Jones Day and has an MA from Cambridge University.

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Bernadette Rogner
Head of Value Acceleration
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Bernadette is the Head of Value Acceleration at Blenheim Chalcot, supporting Blenheim Chalcot’s portfolio on proposition, pricing and sales effectiveness initiatives and establishing and embedding People functions in order to accelerate growth.

Prior to joining Blenheim Chalcot, Bernadette worked at the Cabinet Office and at HM Treasury.

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Ellen Wright
People Operations Manager
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Ellen oversees people processes and operations for the VBS team, as well as a number of our smaller businesses and EVOs.

Prior to joining Blenheim Chalcot in October 2021,  Ellen studied Law at the University of Bristol and holds a legal qualification in the US. Work experience includes working at a large national charity on their recruitment efforts, as well as working in a central London law centre.