Kaleidoscope Group: How It All Began

Hardeep Rai enjoyed a successful 25-year career in Financial Services working in Hedge Funds, Venture Capital, Private Equity (worked for James Caan (ex-Dragon)) and as a Seed Investor. In 2006, he had a life changing event when his son Eshan was born with a severe disability.

This was a defining moment in Hardeep’s life when he realised that no amount of wealth could reverse a disability. He was approached some years later by Shane Bratby (Friedreich’s Ataxia sufferer) who explained the countless challenges and judgements that disabled people face when attempting to raise investment for their business ideas.

1) The birth of Kaleidoscope Investments (Ki) (Early 2015)

This approach from Shane inspired Hardeep to combine his experience and background as an Investor and Entrepreneur together with Shane’s knowledge of the disability community and Ki was born. The aim of Ki was to invest in disabled people with great business ideas and help them to start their own businesses. In addition to investing funds, they would critically provide mentors to work with the disabled entrepreneurs maximising their chances of success.

2) The birth of Kaleidoscope Recruitment (Kr) (Mid 2019)

As Ki was growing, there were an increasing number of disabled people asking for assistance with finding employment. This prompted the birth Kr to help disabled people define their career path and then find their perfect jobs.

3) The birth of Kaleidoscope Advisory (Ka) (Mid 2019)

To help ensure that employers who were hiring disabled people had the right inclusive infrastructure to support them, Ka was born. Some of the services include: company-wide Inclusive policy review and audit, staff inclusion training, website accessibility audit, Workplace experience and Well-Being programmes.

4) The birth of the Kaleidoscope Foundation (Kf) (Early 2020)

Some disabled people who approached Ki were not interested in creating profit-making companies. They wanted to create either ‘not-for-profit’ entities or small businesses that would not be focused on creating profits, but focus on impact. This was the reason Kf was born as an independent UK based charity (registration number 1187266). It can allocate grants of up to £10,000 to disabled people whose applications are successful. The charity will also offer training services to disabled people that require additional skills or confidence building.