Denise Sidhu, chairperson, Irish Venture Capital Association. (Photo: Fennell Photography)
Denise Sidhu named as new chair of Irish Venture Capital Association
Dublin; Wednesday, 19th July, 2023: Denise Sidhu, partner and director of Cork headquartered Kernel Capital, has been elected chairperson of the Irish Venture Capital Association (IVCA). She replaces Leo Hamill, former managing partner of Investec Ventures in Ireland, who has completed his term of office. Denise Sidhu is the third woman to chair the IVCA in the last four years.
The Irish Venture Capital Association is the representative organisation for venture capital and private equity firms in Ireland. Last year venture capital investment into Irish tech start-ups and SMEs totalled over €1.3 billion.
Commenting on her election, Ms Sidhu said that her focus would be to work with Government and all relevant stakeholders to put financial structures in place to ensure indigenous technology and life science firms will be able to source funding locally and maximise their potential.
“Ireland’s most innovative technology firms are being cherry picked by global investors. We need to be able to scale from local resources, rather than letting international investors harvest our best companies and develop jobs and headquarters overseas rather than here in Ireland.”
She added, “Failure to provide locally sourced scaling funding means that that Irish jobs and headquarters move abroad just at a time when companies are reaching their maximum growth potential. Funding local companies and scaling them here will help to broaden the tax base.”
Ms Sidhu, who joined Kernel Capital in 2001, has played a key role in over 20 trade sales of the firm’s venture capital portfolio companies. She is a board member with portfolio investees B-Secur, Cirdan Imaging, Kianda Technologies and Nova Leah.
Before joining Kernel, Denise who is from Blackrock, Cork, was head of finance in Ulster Bank Commercial Services Limited and prior to that financial controller of the Bank of Nova Scotia, Channel Islands.
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About the Irish Venture Capital Association
The Irish Venture Capital Association is the representative organisation for venture capital and private equity firms in Ireland.
An independent DCU report released in January 2020 found that Irish venture capital and private equity firms have invested €5bn in Irish SMEs since 2003 and, through syndication, have attracted in a further €3bn in funding from international firms.
This supported the state’s investment through its agencies’ Enterprise Ireland and the Irish Strategic Investment Fund and geared up investment through the Seed & Venture Capital Programme by almost 16 times.
The study found that employment numbers in venture and private equity backed firms increased by an average of 27% per annum since 2016, compared to an overall increase in employment in the economy of 3.3% per annum over the same time period.