By Denis Sheehan, Publisher, H&C News: First UK apprenticeships business to achieve Unicorn status focuses on diversity.
With apprenticeships being so vital to hospitality and catering in addressing the current people and skills gaps across our industry, news of an apprenticeship provider becoming a Unicorn is to be welcomed.
Unicorn is a label for tech start-ups that have reached a valuation of more than £1 billion.
The business, rather catchily called Multiverse, was founded in 2016 by Euan Blair, son of the former prime minister Tony Blair, which following its latest fundraising round is now valued at circa £1.4 billion.
Multiverse helps young people in the UK and US who have not been to university find apprenticeships with companies and access training
Multiverse defines its mission as creating a diverse group of future leaders and further details how it will achieve that as follows: “To achieve this, we provide high-quality apprenticeship programmes that combine work, training and community.” On the company’s website the mission statement emphasises ‘diverse’, which undoubtedly is aimed squarely at Generation Z readers, a message of shared values.
The most recent round of investment in Multiverse follows on from 2021, when the company broke the record for the UK’s largest EdTech venture round. Investors at that time included General Catalyst, Google Ventures, Index Ventures, Audacious Ventures, Latitude and SemperVirens. These institutions were supported by angel investors including John W. Thomson, Chairman of Microsoft, and Jeremy Darroch, Chairman of Sky.
Blair founded Multiverse in 2016 to match young adults and those looking to reskill with apprenticeships. The company now provides apprentices to more than 500 businesses including Microsoft, Visa and the investment bank Morgan Stanley. It has helped more than 8,000 people go through apprenticeships in the UK and US. The 8,000 apprentices placed are diverse.
- 56% of those are people of colour
- More than half are women
- One third come from disadvantaged communities
Interestingly Blair sees apprenticeships as a rolling career development programme where people can return to apprenticeships whenever they need to.
As the workplace has changed more over the past three years than at any other time, it would seem Blair the younger’s vision in 2016 of the potential for apprentices, was as astute as his father’s political insights in the mid 90’s.