In 2023, the Mayor of London’s International Business Programme (MBIP) rebranded as Grow London Global. Grow London Global is a free 12-month programme open to London-based scaleups with an annual turnover greater than £1m and less than £40m, or those that have secured £1m of external equity investment, and that employ between 10 and 250 people.

Over the past seven years the programme has helped more than 1,400 ambitious London scaleups to expand their businesses internationally. Participants span sectors including fintech, cyber and enterprise tech, life sciences and sustainability with alumni scaleup businesses including household names such as Bloom & Wild, Monzo and Revolut. 

To meet the needs of the current economic and geopolitical environment, Grow London Global is an evolution of the MIBP programme with increased capacity to support more companies go global each year.  They also benefit from additional dedicated account managers with specialist sectoral expertise, and an even greater breadth of partners and connections whose knowledge and skills they can leverage. Grow London Global also offers a greater number of events and trade missions and carefully tailored programme content designed to meet the specific needs of each participating scaleup.

Trade missions introduce scaleups to global corporates and investors. They have helped more 1,000 London companies win trade deals worth more than £300m and raise more than £6.5bn of investment. Missions in the past year have included a Sustainability for Cities mission encompassing Rotterdam, Cologne and Berlin with participants meeting representatives from key companies including Bosch, Eurostar and Arcadis along with global real estate specialists Urban Land Institute and CBRE. A RetailTech mission in Paris involved BNP Paribas, Leroy Merlin and leading French luxury groups LVMH and Kering.  

Two US trade missions took place in the latter part of 2022. A FinTech mission to New York included JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley and BMO while a US Life Sciences targeted the New York, New Jersey and Philadelphia markets with participating scaleups meeting with IBM, AT&T, Audible and Rutgers University. 

During Birmingham Tech Week 2023, a new collaboration between the investment promotion agencies of the West Midlands and London was announced, with the aim of helping the region’s high-growth tech companies to achieve their global ambitions. The new partnership agreement, in collaboration with the West Midlands Growth Company (WMGC), will see the programme extended beyond London for the first time, with 10 high-growth tech companies from the West Midlands offered exclusive spaces.

“The programme was integral in introducing us to advisors and stakeholders that helped GripAble build our American market entry strategy, and back it up with investors, ultimately leading to our US launch and in closing of an investment round”
– GripAble

“Fiskl would not have made as much progress had it not been part of the programme. Remarkable to see so many potential banking partners within a four-day online trade mission. Outside of the programme it can take up to 6 months to secure meetings with large banks and then another 18 months to develop the contract. Being part of the programme dramatically reduced this timeline”
– Fiskl

“The programme was a worthwhile experience and has produced incredible results for Enferm. We will continue to remain involved as an alumni as we progress our US expansion”
– Enferm

Grow London Global (Formerly Mayor of London’s International Business Programme) (2023) website