Leading Bay Street Funders Invest in Social Change Rewards

Latest round continues strong support for national health promotion upstart's unique, transformative app

TORONTO, Nov. 25, 2015 /CNW/ - Social Change Rewards, the developer of the world's first national wellness rewards platform, has received funding from some of Canada's best known mobile, technology, and health venture capital firms. The significantly oversubscribed round of financing was led by Relay Ventures, with participation from Lumira Capital, Epic Capital Management, Primary Capital, and a number of private investors.

"Our ability to attract so much attention and such strategic funders from Bay Street further validates the enormous potential of broad-impact social ventures in our changing world, particularly in the health and wellness space," said Andreas Souvaliotis, founder and CEO of Social Change Rewards. "Our backers share in our core belief that the mass-appeal 'nudge' rewards model we are rolling out across Canada can generate dramatic financial efficiencies for government agencies and can be ultimately replicated rapidly across other policy areas and eventually in other countries."

Social Change Rewards' business model builds on overwhelming evidence that replacing or complementing traditional government advertising with simple, popular reward offers is a more effective and cost-efficient way to encourage healthier lifestyle choices on a mass scale. The Carrot Rewards platform, which was developed by Social Change Rewards on behalf of the Government of Canada, enables public-sector agencies and other wellness-promoting organizations to reduce costs, deepen their reach into target populations and gain insights that will help further focus and sharpen future campaigns.

"Social Change Rewards is an innovative health venture with a distinct social mission," said John Albright, Co-founder and Managing Partner of Relay Ventures. "Beyond the obvious appeal of a smart mobile rewards platform, our attention was particularly drawn to Social Change Rewards' uncompromising passion for finding new ways to build a healthier Canada and the incredible opportunity to replicate this world-first concept elsewhere."

Canadians will soon start receiving their choice of popular loyalty rewards (points) just for installing the free Carrot app on their smartphones; for referring others to Carrot; and for allowing the app to offer basic, friendly, non-intrusive everyday wellness lifestyle guidance.

"The Carrot mobile app is about to transform the way policy makers view and support broad behaviour changes," said Tim Sorensen, Social Change Rewards' Board Chair and President of Primary Capital. "Once the rollout begins and results start to trickle in early in 2016, we know the platform will quickly become an integral part of a lot of other public policy campaigns, in Canada and ultimately around the world."

In addition to this latest round of funding of $2 million, the initiative has already received support from the federal and B.C. governments, non-governmental organizations, and the private sector.

About Social Change Rewards
Social Change Rewards (SCR) is a global social enterprise founded by a group of recognized Canadian social entrepreneurs, prominent policy leaders and socially-conscious investors. Through multi-sectorial coalitions, SCR's primary mission is to build innovative national reward platforms which can support behaviour shifts on a mass scale. The organization's core focus is in the critical area of health promotion but its open platform design is also relevant for a broader range of policy promotions ranging from environmental sustainability, financial and tax literacy, to civic engagement.  Social Change Rewards has begun exploring the opportunity to establish similar national reward platforms in partnership with public policy agencies in the United Kingdom and the United States.   socialchangerewards.com

About Relay Ventures
Relay Ventures is an early stage venture capital firm focused exclusively on mobile software, services, technology and content. More than 1.4B mobile devices world-wide run software from a Relay portfolio company. With offices in Menlo Park and Toronto, the firm is active throughout North America. For additional information, visit www.relayventures.com. 

SOURCE Social Change Rewards

Gabrielle Gallant, Hill+Knowlton Strategies, 416-413-4567, [email protected]; Natalia Banoub, Hill+Knowlton Strategies, 416-413-4784, [email protected]