InnoVent Leasing celebrates its 10th anniversary

At InnoVent, 2022 will always be remembered as the year we celebrated our 10th anniversary. Throughout the year we held a series of celebrations in recognition of this special milestone…after all, you don’t turn 10 every day!

One of the first celebrations took place at the Cowdray Park Polo Gold Cup Semi-Finals, back in june. We shared an exciting and fun day with clients and partners:

Then we celebrated with our team and founders at a black tie event in London that included magic acts, some interesting sing-alongs and lots of fun:

 

 

 

 

 

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Once upon a time…

It all started around 12 years ago when our directors Duane Lent and Adrian Saint, were working together at a major London bank:

“InnoVent UK was born out of a discussion Adrian and I had over 12 years ago when our then employer Lombard had started to fall out of love with the idea of providing a financial and Asset management solution for IT assets. We wanted to lead the way in providing a , circular and green solution as more companies expanded their use of laptops and mobile communications equipment.

We developed a business plan called "The red tractor" and talked to Venture Capitalists for over a year before being introduced to the founders of our Parent Company, Bengayi Kumbula and Zakhe Khuzwayo".

Bengayi and Zakhe were already looking to expand InnoVent and bring it to the European market, and after a few-hour phone call with Duane, they agreed to meet up in South Africa and shortly after started the journey. “We spent a lot of time agreeing on a shared vision with them during and after time spent together in South Africa”, says Duane Lent, CEO.

For the first three years, InnoVent UK chartered a similar path to the one our founders had over 15 years previously, in both cases two guys in a very small rented office, sharing one telephone and most importantly the same dream and passion to create something special.

Soon the first customer came in, followed by the second, the third and eventually the capital and profits followed allowing InnoVent to take one more important step and hire new employees, move offices and start accelerating the growth.

From that serviced office for just 2 people we moved to our first permanent offices in 2015 and the team grew to 7, and in the last 2 years it went from 7 to over 20 requiring a further move just as Covid hit in 2020.. We proved that we could work remotely and many new customers came to us seeking laptops and other mobile assets to enable continued trading through the pandemic.

Adrian Saint, COO says “Growing the business during the Covid pandemic made us realise we had such amazing people working with us, who had the passion, drive and commitment to help take the business to the next level. This has given Duane and I the confidence to make the investments in additional employees, larger offices and new business systems”

A sustainable approach

Over the last 10 years InnoVent has created a unique business in the United Kingdom based on the rental and re-rental of IT assets, with a true focus in delivering a real “Device as a Service” solution for public sector and Limited Company and LLP businesses.

We’ve leased over 60,000 new IT assets and most importantly over 20,000 of these assets have been given a Second Life, through something we named our 2nd Life IT program. After a first leasing term is over, we want the equipment returned to InnoVent and we complete a refurbishment process that will leave it in a “as good as new” condition and ready for a secondary user and at up to “half the cost” of New IT Equipment.

You can learn more about our 2nd Life IT program here > https://www.innovent.co.uk/services/leasing-IT-equipment

“Our vision for the future is to build a self-sustaining IT business that doubles in size every two to three years. Our first customers act as the custodian of new IT assets who will use and then return them to us on a regular basis for refurbishment, while a growing community of second life customers continue to subscribe to use this refurbished and fully maintained and managed IT equipment. We have already seen a few of our competitors taking note of and trying to copy some of what we are building and for Adrian and I that validates our unique proposition” - Duane Lent, CEO.