How I secured funding to grow my social enterprise

I’m Tendai, founder of Ruka – a social enterprise reimagining the textured hair industry. I’m a 30-year-old Black woman with a diasporan identity shaped equally by my Zimbabwean heritage and British upbringing.

When I started Ruka in 2020, I wasn’t just launching a beauty brand. I was taking on an industry that had failed Black women for decades – with unsafe products, exploitative supply chains, and almost no innovation. We were building for impact. And impact takes time – and capital.

The problem we set out to solve

The global hair extensions market is huge – yet for textured hair, it’s broken.

Products are often mislabelled, poorly matched, or even unsafe, made from toxic materials and sold through unethical systems. Black women have been left with a false choice: risk their health or compromise on style.

At Ruka, we knew the industry needed a radical rethink. We started co-creating with our community, educating customers and used biomimicry – developing patent-pending, science-led alternatives to traditional synthetic and human hair. Our mission wasn’t about vanity metrics or fast exits – it was about health, representation and dignity – it was about impact.

But building real change at this scale requires investment. And securing that funding was harder than any product challenge.

The struggle to secure finance

Getting people to believe in why we were building Ruka wasn’t difficult. Getting them to fund it was.

Like many social entrepreneurs, I didn’t have a friends-and-family network ready to write big cheques. What I did have was a strong community. So, I started with a crowdfund for £25,000 – we raised £27,000 in three weeks. That momentum helped us secure £1.7 million across angel and seed rounds between October 2020 and May 2021.

But scaling was a different story. Traditional venture capital funding came with mismatched incentives: fast returns, rapid scale and little patience for community-led work.

Worse still, we faced systemic barriers – as a Black woman founder, I was often pitching to rooms that didn’t understand my customer base. Investors wanted to replicate familiar models; we were trying to rebuild an entire ecosystem.

That’s when I realised: we didn’t just need capital. We needed values-aligned capital – investors who believed in the mission as much as the metrics.

Finding the right fit with Big Issue Invest

When we connected with Big Issue Invest (BII), it felt different from the start.

They weren’t just checking financials – they wanted to understand our purpose, people and potential. They asked the right questions, digging into our community relationships and long-term vision.

BII’s approach gave us confidence that they truly understood what we were solving – and why it mattered. Through equity investment and strategic support, we were able to strengthen our infrastructure, grow our team, and scale responsibly.

For me, it meant having a partner who believed that textured hair deserves the same rigour, respect, and innovation as any other beauty category.

That belief from BII and the practical support behind it – is helping us unlock our next stage of growth.

The results (so far)

Since working with Big Issue Invest, we’ve:

• Filed a patent for our shape-memory fibre technology
• Grown our team and built in-house creative and R&D capacity
• Won the Global Beauty Business of Fashion Award as a Breakthrough Beauty Brand

And it’s been less than three months.

We’re now preparing to launch Synths 2, our next-generation biomimetic fibre designed to set new standards for safety, performance and sustainability.

What I’d tell another founder

To any founder or entrepreneur trying to secure funding for a social enterprise: don’t twist your mission to fit someone else’s mould. Find partners who understand what you’re building and why.

One of our customers once told us:

“This is the first time I’ve ever felt like my hair was seen as worthy of science.”

That’s the power of impact-aligned investment. It doesn’t just fund businesses – it fuels systemic change.

Big Issue Invest was that partner for us. And if you’re building something bold and purpose-led, it could be for you too.

Want to grow your social impact?

If you’re looking for social enterprise funding in the UK, or want to learn more about how to fund a social enterprise, talk to Big Issue Invest today.