N Family Club closes £42.5 million investment round

Nursery group, N Family Club, today announced that Gresham House would join existing investor the Steyn Group as minority shareholders in the business, alongside the company’s founder, Phil Sunderland.

With their backing, N will continue under Sunderland’s leadership and aims to further accelerate its growth alongside key initiatives that will improve their team offering and N Family Club’s ability to offer bursaries to children who would not otherwise have access to high-quality early years provision.

Founded in 2017, N Family Club is a group of 20 progressive nurseries across London, Kent, Surrey and the West Midlands. Understanding the huge impact that quality early years education has on a child’s long-term opportunities, N Family Club set out to rethink early years education.

With its own bespoke curriculum, and a reimagined offering for both parents and team, the group’s unique brand of nursery immediately found an audience, enabling rapid growth over the past five years.

N Family Club currently educates more than 2,000 children aged from three months to five years and was recently announced as the UK’s highest quality nursery provider. The investment will enable the group to add 5,000 spaces and support 3,000 team member careers in early years across the UK.

With this new backing, N Family Club will also continue to expand its impact strategy, with a particular focus on initiatives that support its people, the planet and building positive futures for children in the communities that they serve.

This is Gresham House’s first investment in the education sector and is driven by the well documented benefits of high-quality early years education on the outcomes of children’s lives and to wider society. Gresham House’s
expertise in the sustainability space will also support N Family Club’s continued drive to reach net zero and their application to be a B Corp.

Phil Sunderland, N Family Club founder and chief executive
said:

“In less than 5 years, we have expanded to 20 nurseries and been recognised as the UK’s highest quality early years group. We have been able to do so by being focused on delivering outstanding education to the children in our care, offering our team unparalleled opportunities, and creating a sector-leading proposition for parents.

“In addition to building a wide portfolio of nurseries that look and feel uniquely our own, we have also welcomed other high-quality groups and nurseries into the N Family.

“I am proud to have assembled a team of some of the most experienced leaders in early years to support our growth, alongside experts from outside the sector.

“Gresham House’s BSIF II investment represents a huge vote of confidence in our approach and in our strong sustainability ethos. Alongside the Steyn Group and our existing investors, their financial support, expertise, and shared commitment to promoting wellbeing and sustainability will enable us to accelerate our growth plans, creating thousands of new nursery places, new jobs, and new possibilities for parents.”

Join our mailing list

Stay up to date with all our events, awards and publications.

Information you provide us with will be kept private at all times, and will be used for communication and research purpose only.