PARMINDER BASRAN
From Madchester to Marvel and beyond: how Parminder Basran, the Mancunian founder of growth capital investors VGC Partners is ripping up the investment rulebook with a groundbreaking portfolio spanning recording studios, podcasting, sneakers, plant milk and more…
In 2011 Parminder Basran was fresh out of London Business School and living in a riverside apartment in Chiswick, west London.
The old Victorian power station nearby housed Metropolis, the seminal recording studios which were put up for sale shortly after he moved in. Having spied an opportunity in the then under-used studios (Freddie Mercury’s Fazioli piano was gathering dust in a corner), Parminder made an offer. There was one problem: the price. The sellers wanted £5m. Parminder had £100,000 after remortgaging his flat. Approaching banks for a loan didn’t work either: he was rejected by 11 of them because, as Parminder says, “I’d never done a deal and didn’t tick their boxes. [My investment career] was over before it started.”
Eventually, a chance meeting with a friend in Manchester put him in touch with FTSE-listed property developer Helical, who stumped up the cash. What Parminder did next was truly transformational: he helped convert the studios into a creative hub, with a bar and music academy, with stars such as Rihanna, Mark Ronson and Led Zeppelin swanning through the doors. One year after buying it, Parminder sold his initial stake, generating a 4.3x return.
“Doing that first deal by myself, where the risk was losing my house, was less pressure than working with others’ money because you don’t want to let them down,” he says.
Today, Parminder is founding partner and CEO at growth capital investors VGC Partners. Since that Metropolis deal, VGC has generated £100m across several funds and investors. As part of their mission to “invest in innovative, next-generation brands and businesses that move the world forward”, they’ve sold kidtech brand SuperAwesome to Epic Games (makers of proto-metaverse platform Fortnite), saved Pervical menswear from liquidation, and currently run a zeitgeist-adjacent portfolio spanning CBD-wellness products, podcasting and pea protein milk.
The firm’s secret? “Back in 2005-2006, I identified a gap in the market for early-stage private equity: the gap between venture capital and private equity is under-capitalised in the UK.”
Having an uncanny knack for discovering the next big thing also helps. Parminder’s second flash of genius came shortly after the Metropolis sale, when he was introduced to Terry O’Neill, the photographer who chronicled the Swinging Sixties. Parminder discovered O’Neill had an archive of 4.5m photos of some of the biggest celebrities of the 20th Century (everybody from Frank Sinatra to Elizabeth Taylor) lying dormant in the basement of his London flat.
“You couldn’t make it up,” says Parminder. “I was looking through these images thinking ‘content is king’: these photos could make brand collaboration and gallery distribution opportunities around the world.” VGC bought a stake in Iconic Images (which owned the archive) and soon launched collaborations such as limited-edition British racing green Leica cameras, which sold for £25,000-£30,000 each. In 2021, VGC sold its stake in Iconic Images for £20m to New York-based Authentic Brands Group (ABG).
Born and bred in Manchester, Parminder comes from an entrepreneurial family. His parents founded a food manufacturing firm and the younger Parminder often worked on the shop floor. “I’m probably the only managing partner of a private equity firm with a forklift truck driver’s licence.”
He was also a promising teenage footballer, on the books at Stockport County, Port Vale, and Crewe Alexandra as a kid, and playing for Macclesfield Town’s reserve team while doing his A Levels. His football skills took him to Rutgers University in New Jersey before he returned to the UK to do a degree in Management Studies at Leeds University and later an MBA at London Business School.
The spirit of his hometown has never left him, though. Parminder came of age during the Madchester era of the late 1980s and early 90s, something that manifests itself today in his love for Italian sportswear. “When Parminder rocked up to our first meeting in Off-Whites and a CP Company hoodie, we knew we were on the same wavelength,” says Rob Franks, co-founder of luxury sneaker brand Kick Game, part of VGC’s portfolio.
Like many Mancunians, he’s very chatty and makes friends easily. “Early in my career, I’d latch onto people, going out, asking questions and getting advice,” he remembers. “I’d ask the same questions to 10 different people to get their perspective – I’ve got 20 notebooks full of their advice at home. I still do this today… I always tell our founders, we’ll be business partners for three to six years, but mates for life. These are authentic relationships, not bought ones.”
“You can end up getting isolated if you're the CEO of a business,” he adds. “So, you've got to actively go out and build networks of people you can speak to.”
This ability to work the room has been fundamental to VGC’s success. VGC drives growth for businesses by introducing them to corporate partners who could be potential clients, such as Nike, Amazon, Adidas or Premier League football clubs (in the case of SuperAwesome). In 2017, menswear label Percival went into forced liquidation after going into debt and having bailiffs hovering around its London shop. VGC made a £150,000 seed investment into the brand a year later which Percival turned into £1.5m. VGC followed up with a further £3m in 2020. They also introduced Percival to England football manager Gareth Southgate, clinching the deal to dress him for Euro 2020. Today, Percival is also a favourite of Marvel stars Chris Evans and Tom Holland.
Parminder stresses that founders should take advantage of these networking opportunities.
“One of the things we say to founders is we can open most doors for you, but you’ve got to walk through those doors with the right attitude and mindset,” he says. “If you go on a journey with us, you need to synthesise the input of people we can put you in front of. There’s no point in me calling mentors and advisers regularly for advice and guidance if I don’t synthesise it into how both me and our business operate.”
VGC also does extensive due diligence on the founders and businesses it works with, even employing internal psychologists. But Parminder stresses the onus is on founders to make a success of their firms.
“Unfortunately, you can put some founders in front of some of the top people in the world, and they still aren’t able to change their psychology, their chemistry in the brain, all the stuff needed to move the business forward,” he says. “But you get some clever founders who understand they may not be the CEO, but somebody else can turbo-charge the business, while they still own the equity.”
Parminder says it’s important not to get emotionally attached to investments. “Because in some instances, you may need to let a couple go if they’re not doing well. You can’t throw good money after bad, plus you need to know when the time is right to sell. Anything that clouds that judgement is probably not a good thing.”
Parminder is excited about VGC’s current roster, such as podcasting production company Novel (its true crime podcast The Girlfriends has just been commissioned by film distributor A24 to be made into a TV series) and Swedish pea protein milk Sproud, which recently signed a global deal with Joe & The Juice.
For somebody obsessed with self-improvement and lifelong learning – Parminder’s current practices include cold-water therapy, fasting and learning about neuroscience – he expects a similar betterment outlook in the founders VGC works with.
“We’re always looking for founders with a growth mindset,” says Parminder. “This type of mindset can get you somewhere. Because it’s got me somewhere… We’re all people trying to get better every day. That journey doesn’t stop.”