Jungle Creations sells majority stake in business for £30 million

From left: Co-CEOs Nat Poulter and Melissa Chapman, and founder Jamie Bolding [Image: Jungle Creations]

By Jack Shillito

How’s that for some wild news?

The team at Jungle Creations have, er, seen the wood for the trees. They’ve agreed to sell a 51% stake in the social media publishing business to private equity firm, Livingbridge, for £30 million.

As we reported back in January, Jungle’s founder, Jamie Bolding, stepped down after six and a half years at the helm, having started the business in 2014.

So £30 million for 51% of your business isn’t bad for the lad who started working at it in his mum’s spare room 7 years ago, turning over a few hundred dollars a day.

As we also reported, the business is now ably led by Co-CEOs Melissa Chapman and Nat Poulter, who have been guiding the business across its seven media brands which include: Twisted, VT, Four Nine, Craft Factory, Level Fitness, Lovimals and Blue Crate. Indeed, Twisted was recently awarded the accolade ‘Media Brand of The Year’.

Jungle has seen rapid growth in recent years as it capitalises on the shift in advertising spend from traditional to social media. As a result of that capitalisation, Jungle:

• generated revenues of £19.3M in 2020

• is on track to generate revenues of £30M and profits of £5.5M this year - the highest in its history

• now boasts over 125M followers across its brands

For Livingbridge’s part, it’s a mid-market private equity firm with offices in the UK, the US and Australia, investing in fast growing companies valued up to £300 million. Its investment will support Jungle in fuelling its growth strategy, including the launch of new brands, increased content output for existing brands and internationalisation. 

Melissa Chapman summed up the months of talks by saying, “We are thrilled to have partnered with Livingbridge, a company with extensive experience in helping businesses scale.” 

While Nat Poulter added, “They have shown great passion for our business model and understand how well positioned we are to capitalise on this industry that’s on the rise. We believe that together we will continue to provide high quality content to our viewers whilst we embark on the next stage of our growth journey.”

Jamie Bolding and Edge Investments (who invested in Jungle in 2018 to support its growth) will retain minority stakes in the business.