news

News

London-based ad-free, digital community and networking app and platform for professionals, Guild has raised $2.7million in seed funding from existing angel investors, as it seeks to establish itself as an alternative to Linkedin and to those using WhatsApp for business purposes.

Creating a platform and ecosystem for professional communities and networking that is as easy to use as WhatsApp or LinkedIn but without the ads that result in privacy problems, the startup was initially launched as a safer business alternative to WhatsApp. It went live in beta in 2019, and then opened to the public in early 2020. Guild was created by entrepreneur Ashley Friedlein, who also founded Econsultancy, sold to Centaur Media plc in 2012, and is an investor in a number of technology and B2B media businesses.

Since then, it has evolved to become both a platform for businesses to run GDPR-compliant communities and groups, and an alternative to Linkedin for individuals. Guild is designed mobile-first as a native messaging app but also has a web version. The $2.7 million seed investment comes from Guild’s existing angel investors including B2B media and tech entrepreneurs Tim Weller (Founder, Incisive Media), Ben Heald (Founder, Sift), Victoria Mellor (Co-founder, Melcrum), Alex Martinez (Co-founder, Procurement Leaders).

Guild’s growth has accelerated due to the increased importance of digital collaboration and networking during the pandemic, both across organisations and for individuals – up 500% since the start of 2020. The investment will be used for continued product development, including integrations and payments, and to invest in marketing to grow the user base, as Guild moves towards a Series A funding round in 2022.

As a community platform for businesses, the startup replicates ease-of-use of consumer messaging apps but with GDPR compliance and greater admin, customer service and data control. Guild customers include The Marketing Society, CIPD, PRCA, PPA, The Lawyer, Management Today, Cambridge University Judge Business School, Econsultancy, Deloitte and the National Education Union.

Click here to read the full article.

Moneysupermarket (MONY.L) has snapped up Maple Syrup Media, which trades as Quidco, for £101m ($139m).

The online price comparison website said on Tuesday that the move falls in line with its expansion plans, and long-term goals of helping households to save money.

The debt-free, cash-free deal consists of an initial sum of £87m, with a further deferred £14m, and follows Moneysupermarket’s takeover of Decision Tech in 2018.

Quidco is the second largest cash back business in the UK with around 1 million transacting users. It offers cashback at around 4,500 merchants including retail, travel and switching services.

“The group will benefit from adding a broad and leading cashback offer, providing an additional way for our users to save on even more products and services,” Moneysupermarket said.

Click here to read the full article.

London-based digital bank fintech Zopa has announced to have secured £220 million as their latest fundraise. The investment was led by Japan’s SoftBank Group with participation from Chimera Abu Dhabi, as the lender looks to grow its market ahead of a possible listing by 2022. 

This is the company’s most significant funding round to date and was also supported by existing investors, including Silverstripe, Northzone and Augmentum.

London-based neobank Zopa offers peer-to-peer (P2P) lending service, pioneering auto finance solutions and more. The funding round marks Zopa’s entry into the unicorn club with a valuation of around £750 million ($1.03 billion).

The funding will be used to meet the capital requirements of Zopa bank’s rapidly growing balance sheet. Recent growth has been fuelled by the continued expansion of Zopa’s suite of digital-first financial products and has attracted some of the smartest and brightest talent from across the industry.

Zopa was founded in 2005 by Giles Andrews, James Alexander, Richard Duvall, David Nicholson and Tim Parlett. In nine months of gaining its full bank licence, neobank Zopa was successfully launched Fixed Term Savings accounts and an innovative credit card to UK consumers.

The digital bank has already attracted over £250 million in deposits. Also, it is a top 10 credit card issuer in the UK in terms of new customers. It puts Zopa in a uniquely strong financial position. 

It also holds stakes in OakNorth, which gives to SMEs, and digital banking app Revolut. In July, it soared to a $33 billion valuation after an $800 million funding round led by SoftBank.

Jaidev Janardana, CEO at Zopa said: “In a very crowded ecosystem that often focuses on current accounts or other free money management offerings, Zopa meets customer needs by focusing on how they borrow and save, the two things that have most impact on their finances.”

“Softbank Vision Fund 2’s investment into our future is a clear validation of Zopa’s responsible, sustainable and profitable approach to lending, our strong unit economics, and our vision to build the UK’s strongest performing bank with the most happy customers.”

Sourav Sen, investor for SoftBank Investor Advisers added: “We believe Zopa’s fast-growing market penetration reflects high customer demand for adaptable financial services within a usable platform that can be customized to their specific needs. Zopa is fast emerging as a leading player in the UK’s nascent neo banking sector and we are proud to partner with Jaidev and the team on this journey.”

Minister for Investment Gerry Grimstone added: “Softbank’s investment in Zopa’s digital banking platform is a testament to the UK’s enduring strength as a global hub for investment, built on our competitive economy, cutting-edge innovation and world-leading capability across areas like science, services, and research and innovation. The Global Investment Summit will demonstrate how we can use inward investment to nurture technological developments and propel our economy towards a more prosperous, exciting future.”

Reportedly, the funding round sets Zopa on track for its initial public offering in London as soon as the fourth quarter of next year. Further, the digital bank also intends in the next year to open into the booming BNPL market in the UK.

In a recent development, Gorillas, a Berlin-based on-demand grocery delivery startup, has successfully raised close to $1 billion in a Series C funding round. It is the largest funding of a non-listed business Europe’s grocery delivery sector has seen to date. The round was led by German delivery champion Delivery Hero, and included further investments by its existing investors Coatue Management, DST Global, Fifth Wall, Tencent, Atlantic Food Labs, Fifth Wall, Greenoaks, A* and new investors Alanda Capital, G Squared, Macquarie Capital, MSA Capital and Thrive Capital.

This new funding comes 7 months after Gorillas successfully raised $290 million in its Series B funding in March 2021 .

Since its founding in June 2020, Gorillas grew to operate over 180 warehouses in 9 international markets, delivering over 4.5 million orders in the past 6 months alone. The capital raised will allow Gorillas to reinforce its footprint in existing markets while investing more deeply in its operations, people, technology, marketing and finance infrastructures. These investments will help Gorillas to enhance its customer experience.

“The size of today’s funding round by an extraordinary investment consortium underscores the tremendous market potential that lies ahead of us. With Delivery Hero, we have chosen strong strategic support that is deeply rooted in the global delivery market and is renowned for having a unique experience in sustainably scaling a German company internationally. We have the best team in our sector, leading partners, and financial resources to strengthen our market-leading position in Europe and beyond,“ says Kağan Sümer, CEO and Founder of Gorillas.

“Gorillas has been setting new standards for the delivery industry by offering an efficient and sustainable alternative to traditional grocers. We have been following their stellar growth over the past few months, and we are beyond excited to be now part of their journey. Both of our companies place a lot of value on creating a strong sense of community and we are convinced that our investment will positively impact employees, consumers as well as our industry.” says Niklas Östberg, CEO and Co-Founder of Delivery Hero.

Founded by CEO Kağan Sümer, Gorillas is building an infrastructure for the fastest last-mile delivery of essential human needs. Users of the app benefit from access to more than 2,000 essential items at retail prices for a delivery fee of just 1.80€. In a little over one year, Gorillas has expanded to more than 55 cities, including Amsterdam, London, Paris, Madrid, New York, Milan and Munich, and built more than 180 warehouses across 9 countries.

The 20-month-old London payments technology startup Primer has closed a Series B funding round that values the payments infrastructure startup at $425 million. The $50M Series B fundraise was led by ICONIQ Growth, the San Francisco-based investment firm that has backed global tech companies such as Adyen and Marqeta to Snowflake and Datadog. Existing investors, including Accel, Balderton Capital, Seedcamp, Speedinvest, and RTP Global all participated in the round.

The fintech disruptor, which was founded in early 2020 by ex-Paypal/Braintree employees and employs more than 70 people across 20 countries, has built the world’s first automation platform for payments.

Roy Luo, Partner at ICONIQ Growth, joins Primer’s Board. He commented: “Over the past two decades, the pace of new payment solutions entering the market has been accelerating dramatically to support global consumer demand for trends like mobile payments, digital wallets, 1-click checkout, buy now pay later, and so on. However, no one payment solution is close to accommodating all the changes and innovations that merchants need to keep up. So, for merchants’ payment and engineering teams, this dynamic forces immense technical complexity in tying together multiple payment methods, gateways, fraud detection, and more.”

With this platform, merchants can build new and better buying experiences with ease. Plug-in any desired payment solution with 1-click connections, define logic across the entire payment lifecycle with a drag-and-drop workflow editor, and create seamless, “smart” checkout experiences that meet today’s customer expectations. For the first time, merchants can connect and control their entire payments stack, and build their ideal payment flows autonomously from scratch.

Paul Anthony, co-founder at Primer, said: “Our past experience running hundreds of deep-dive technical workshops with some of the biggest online companies like Uber, Spotify and Airbnb, has given us unique insight into the deeply-rooted technical fragmentation that exists in global payments. Primer offers all the underlying infrastructure for merchants to create new, better buying experiences for their customers. But, we’ve barely scratched the surface of how payments automation will disrupt payments for good. Our mission is to make payments a first-class product area in any business. ICONIQ Growth shares our expansive vision, so it’s hugely rewarding to add them to our Board as a trusted, experienced partner and advisor.”

Click here to read the full article.

London-based vegan meal delivery startup allplants has recently secured a £38 million Series B funding round led by Draper Esprit, backers of Revolut, Cazoo and Trustpilot. The round is the biggest ever Series B raise by a D2C plant-based food company in Europe and follows record-breaking crowdfund and Series A rounds.

Other new investors in the round include purpose driven CPG fund The Craftory, Silicon Valley-based TriplePoint Capital, plus international England footballers Chris Smalling and Kieran Gibbs, and Cassandra Stavrou MBE, who founded the UK’s leading independent snack company PROPER Snacks.

Existing investors Felix Capital, the venture fund behind Oatly, Deliveroo and Peloton, and Octopus Ventures, early backers of Cazoo, Zoopla and Depop, also participated.

As per the company press release, allplants’ continued growth is the result of serving the rapidly growing ‘plant-curious’, or flexitarian, consumer market already worth an annual £100 billion in developed markets and £10 billion in the UK alone. Founded by Jonathan Petrides and his brother Alex, the company’s revenues have more than doubled every year since launching in 2017. Each night, an allplants dinner is now consumed every second.

allplants will use the latest investment to increase its plant-based kitchen in Walthamstow, North London, to six times its current size, enabling it to meet an exploding direct-to-consumer UK market. It will also build scalable capacity for rapid distribution into other channels.

In addition, the funding round will enable a significant expansion of allplants’ team to bring in talent across the entire stack of the business, from additional culinary-school-trained chefs through to operations, innovation, marketing, and technology.

The recent raise will also allow allplants to innovate to new levels, creating an even wider selection of meals to meet all tastes and preferences among a growing customer base and developing a broader range of product categories.

allplants’ plant-based meals are delivered across the entirety of Great Britain. The model combines convenience with delicious, healthy food and enables environmentally aware customers to easily reduce their impact on the world through small, delightful adjustments to their eating habits.

Click here to read the full article.

Based out of Birmingham, Aceleron is a pioneer in sustainable battery technology. Now, the company has secured £2.5 million as it continues to expand its global sales. The funding came from existing investors BGF, the MEIF Proof of Concept & Early Stage Fund, which is managed by Mercia and part of the Midlands Engine Investment Fund, and Mercia’s EIS funds. With this, the total funds raised by the company account for £5.4 million.

Aceleron will use the investment to build relationships with automotive manufacturers and other major corporates. Also, it will continue to enhance its products. Currently, the company employs around 25 staff and is all set to double its revenue this year.

Amrit Chandan, CEO, said: “I am pleased to have secured further support for our mission of making batteries maintainable to help carefully preserve and nurture our scarce resources. The world is waking up to the importance of this mission, with an increased awareness that we are borrowing the resources of our children and thus have a duty of care. With the support of this funding, Aceleron will be the foundation of circularity in the battery world whilst positively impacting people around the world.”

Sandy Reid of Mercia added: “Given the focus on clean technology, there is a huge potential market for Aceleron’s products. Sales are increasing year on year and it is already attracting interest from major energy companies and manufacturers. The funding will enable it to continue to enhance its products and collect performance data to further build its credibility in the market.”

Tom Horton, investor at BGF added: ”We’re thrilled to be supporting Aceleron with additional investment to expand its global sales programme and continue the roll out of new products. Aceleron is a hugely exciting business and is well aligned with BGF’s commitment to backing more companies in the field of clean growth. We have already invested over £200 million and backed more than 20 companies in the sector and remain focused on making a meaningful contribution to those businesses that are helping to mitigate or reverse the effects of human activity on the environment.”

Grant Peggie, Director at the British Business Bank, said: “This latest deal shows how the MEIF can support businesses over the course of their growth journey, providing further funding rounds to support product development, expansion and job creation. We would encourage other Midlands’ businesses seeking to reduce their carbon footprint to consider the finance available through MEIF.”

Andy Street, the Mayor of the West Midlands, said: “We want the West Midlands to become the global leader in state-of-the-art battery technology and research, and it is companies like Aceleron that are going to help make that happen. When I visited the firm earlier this year I was blown away by their drive and innovation, as well as their commitment to their home here in our region.

Click here to read the full article.

With a mission to banish financial instability, London-based fintech startup Plum has announced a first close of new funding that will supercharge the company’s expansion and bolster its growth as Europe’s ultimate money management app.

The first close of $14 million is part of an anticipated $24 million Series A. The round is led by a consortium of noted investors, including new partners dmg ventures and Ventura Capital, who have previously invested in scaleups such as Cazoo and Farewill (dmg) and Railsbank (Ventura). The new investors are joined in this round by previous Plum backers Global Brain, VentureFriends and 500 Startups.

The platform is welcoming support from several notable names from the fintech space as part of this round. Francesco Simoneschi, CEO & co-founder of Truelayer, Charles Delingpole, founder and CEO of ComplyAdvantage, and Hugh Strange, VP of Product at Nubank are backing Plum as angel investors, bringing with them a wealth of experience from across the sector.

Aimed at reducing financial instability, the startup was founded in 2016. The platform acts like a brain by automating the parts of personal finance that people find difficult or don’t have time for.

The new funding comes after a period of steep growth, as savers and investors across Europe look to fintechs to help them grow their wealth in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. The company has seen connected customer numbers double in the past year, with more than 1million people across Europe now saving and investing with Plum. It has saved more than $1 billion for customers since its inception and was recently ranked the most popular choice during the pandemic out of 10 investment apps.

The company is planning to give customers a chance to share in its success too, with a new crowdfunding round opening on Crowdcube later in October. It has seen record-breaking interest in the campaign so far, with more than 20,000 people registering interest in the round in the first 12 hours of the campaign launching.

Click here to read the full article.

British sportswear brand Gymshark that had its humble beginning in a modest Birmingham garage nine years ago is in talks with banks and investors over a potential IPO. The company is reportedly about to cash in more than £700 million. And interestingly, the startup’s founder has not even turned 30.

It comes right a year after the brand just became the second British company since 2001 to achieve a valuation of over £1 billion without any prior investment after Francis sold a 21% stake in the company to the US private equity firm General Atlantic in August 2020.

He and his private equity backers are in preliminary talks with institutional investors and investment banks about a flotation, as was reported by Sky New this week.

While juggling university with a £5 an hour job at Pizza Hut, Francis started the company with school buddy Lewis Morgan from his parents’ house while he was all of 19. Originating from his own frustrations with finding gym clothes, all the ideas for the designs of the gym wear were sketched right from his bedroom.

Together with co-founder Lewis, the duo started attending body building exhibitions to help raise their profile. Using social media influencers, they teamed up with YouTube body builders Nikki Blackketter and Lex Griffin to increase exposure and this worked in their favour. In 2013, Francis exhibited the company’s products at the BodyPower fitness trade show in Birmingham and there has been no looking back since then. After the trade show ended, a tracksuit went viral on Facebook, generating a whopping £30,000 in sales within 30 minutes.

The business is now based in Solihull and employs over 550 people. As the company pitches to investors as part of a major London stock market listing, Francis – the biggest shareholder of Gymshark – could land with a fortune worth as much as £700million.

A spokesman for Gymshark said: “We regularly speak to financial institutions to ensure we are connected to the business world and we continue to learn. Any recent conversations we have had have been about introducing these organisations to Gymshark and our journey so far.”

“We are working with Ben and the team to build Gymshark into the global leader we know it can be,” the spokesman for General Atlantic added.

Fuelled by influencer marketing and burgeoning consumer demand for fitness apparel and athleisure, the startup now has a social media following of more than 15 million with Francis alone having 300,000 Instagram fans.

It now operates in more than 180 countries with an audience of over 16 million on social media. The brand opened its first US distribution centre in California this July, which will be followed by two East Coast centres later in the year. The business now plans to take on Australia with a new distribution centre this year as well.

London-based Fika, a platform that seeks to promote ‘mental fitness’ has raised £1.2 million in funding to develop its model as a proactive mental wellness tool for businesses and their employees. The funding was led by Rising Stars, with a syndicate of ten UK and US-based angel investors, including Biogen board member Brian Posner and NCFE CEO David Gallagher, who will both join Fika’s board. 

The employee assistance programme (EAP) marketplace is crowded, and growing awareness of mental health has led to the creation of several mental health and wellbeing platforms. Fika, however, takes a different approach. 

Traditional EAP programmes focus on recovery. In practice, employees will use them only after suffering an adverse event. The consequences of this are enormous. Co-founder Nick Bennett told UKTN it meant that many people did not get the help they need. “The EAP systems are in place for then they’ve hit the bottom, and you only get, on average, 8-10% usage,” he said. The consequence is that poor mental health has a huge business cost. Instead, Fika’s mission is to give ‘mental fitness’ the same level of awareness as ‘physical fitness’. 

An image search can quickly reveal the difference, says Bennett, “if you search physical health, you see people in the park smiling, happy faces. But if you put in mental health,” he explained, “you get outlines of skills, or images with words like ‘depression.’” 

Fika aims to promote mental fitness as a positive and proactive activity for everybody. 

Fika offers a training platform, based around mental fitness, that can integrate with a company’s existing training programme. So, right from staff induction, staff are taught how to look after their mental health in the same way they are taught and encouraged to look after their physical health. 

Gareth Fryer, Fika’s other co-founder, points out the considerable discrepancy between physical and mental health in the workplace. “For decades, we’ve trained people how to lift boxes. Why aren’t we training people how to manage their mental loads?” 

The concept is simple. Instead of waiting for a problem to manifest, employees can be taught how to monitor and maintain their mental health. Whether it’s a graduate suffering from imposter syndrome in their first days, or a seasoned employee at risk of burnout from years of pressure and deadlines. 

Fika has onboarded over seventy new clients this year, including retailer DFS, who are working with them to research to positive impact it is having. DFS are in the process of implementing Fika into its organisation, using the daily training to improve mental resilience among its staff and, where necessary, creating individualised pathways to help staff. The trail has been highly successful, with a high take up by staff and positive early impacts. 

Click here to read the full article.