Investor & Entrepreneur

About Mitesh Soma

The Full Story

Mitesh Soma is an investor and multi-award winning entrepreneur. 

Having founded numerous multi-million turnover businesses he has experience of investing, developing, acquiring, merging and selling businesses. 

Mitesh invests in established businesses across various sectors and helps with capital funding, growth strategies and turnaround expertise. His team consist of finance, marketing, IT, business development, HR, legal, international and operational professionals. Mitesh can help  businesses achieve their objectives, including turnaround, international expansion, growth, exit and capital markets listing. 

He has successfully acquired, grown and exited businesses over his 25 year career including an established manufacturing company, a healthcare brand with over 30 years heritage, a luxury global cosmetics business, a wholesale and trade distributor, a central London retail pharmacy, a new concept luxury spa, multiple online businesses across various verticals and a call centre business.

Mitesh has also founded multiple businesses including Chemist Direct (www.chemistdirect.co.uk), Europe’s leading online chemist and the winner of the Retailer of the Year at the Startups Awards in 2008. 

He was named a Young Gun by Growing Business in 2008, and in 2009 was named the Best Male Entrepreneur in the BT Business Essence of the Entrepreneur Awards. He also won the coveted CBI & Real Business Young Company of the Year Award and HSBC Start Up Starts.

He also won awards from Insider42  for Best Entrepreneur, Smarta Top 100 Champion, IOD Director of the Year Finalist and C&D Awards Finalist. 

Mitesh graduated from London’s City University with a 1st class degree in business and computing. He has a background in management consultancy with Deloitte Consulting and SAP. He has worked for numerous firms including Citigroup, Deutsche Investment Bank, ABN Amro, MunichRe, Bayer etc.

Mitesh came up with the idea for Chemist Direct while assisting his wife Krishna, a qualified pharmacist, with their chemist in Westminster. He identified huge mark-ups between manufacturing and retail prices and realised costs could be slashed by cutting out the middlemen and keeping overheads to a minimum by using e-commerce. The company turned over £5m in its first year.
In March 2009, Soma received a £3m investment from former Skype co-founders Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis, now of VC fund Atomico.

Soma partially exited Chemist Direct in June 2013 prior to a $10m investment from Atomico, DMG Media and Lepe Partners to start an investment company. Chemist Direct is now part of the Pharmacy2U group.

Mitesh is now an active investor and is involved in businesses across numerous sectors. Mitesh is also a regular speaker and media commentator/writer. He has appeared on BBC News, GMTV, Sky News, and is regularly quoted in a variety of newspapers including The Sunday Times, The Daily Telegraph and The FT. He is also a motivational speaker,  has sat on boards and on HMRC's making tax digital committee.