Jamaican listed venture capital outfit SSL Venture Capital (SSLVC) is admitting to taking a hit from its three-year investment in data and research company Bluedot Data Intelligence.

The Jamaica Observer has conservatively estimated that the hit taken by SSLVC is close to $20 million from the sale of its 50 per cent stake in Bluedot. The sale was consummated over two weeks ago.

Investigations by Sunday Finance showed that SSLVC pocketed US$240,000 from the sale of its 50 per cent stake in Bluedot having bought the shares in 2018 for about $53.7 million.

At today’s trading rate SSLVC stake would have been valued at $37.5 million, amounting to a decline of $16.2 million. SSLVC collected US$99,000 from Bluedot founder and CEO Larren Peart on December 20, 2020 having sold its remaining 30 per cent shares in the company back to him.

This completed the venture capitalists’ divestiture of the research company having earlier sold a 20 per cent stake to start-up company Yes Iyah Limited on October 6, 2021 for US$66,000. The shares were sold to Yes Iyah after Peart reneged on a deal reached earlier in the year in which he would buy back the shares from SSLVC after paying a deposit of US$75,000.

In completing the buy-back deal with Peart two weeks ago, SSLVC wished the new investors and Bluedot well as they seek to grow and expand the company, particularly in the Trinidad & Tobago market, which Bluedot is targeting with its new technologies.

Bluedot provides decision support services, including qualitative and quantitative market research, data analytics, business development strategy, social media optimisation solutions and management consulting services.

Founded in 2015, Bluedot was among three unlisted marketing companies in which SSLVC took equity positions in 2018. The others are Bar Central Limited and Muse 360 Integrated Limited, which SSLVC have shuttered having ranked up millions in losses.

When Sunday Finance quizzed SSL principal officer Zachary Harding about the hit taken from the Bluedot investment, he responded by explaining, “When the venture capital arm (SSLVC) was formed, the idea at the time would have been to support and grow small businesses. With the reality of a pandemic facing us, the SSL group restructured and refocused and it was felt that SSL needed to go back to its core of the stable wealth management, asset management and brokerage businesses and not experiment in the more risky venture capital space.”

Harding advised that he then took a deliberate decision to exit that space and allow the founder and CEO of Bluedot to drive the business utilising his entrepreneurial spirit, but without the strictures that come with being part if any listed or regulated entity. He concluded by saying, “We are proud of the role we played in Bluedot’s journey, and wish them all the best.”