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London-based LDC is a leading mid-market private equity house in the UK. It is the private equity arm of Lloyds Banking Group and is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority. Now, LDC announced that it just completed a £22.5 million investment in Marmalade Game Studio (Marmalade), a market-leading game developer and publisher in the UK.
The investment round was led by Dale Alderson, Jacob Leone and Aziz Ul-Haq at LDC in Manchester. As part of the transaction, Dale and Jacob will also join the board, alongside inbound Non-Executive Chairman Andrew Graham, formerly of games developer Mediatonic, which is known for games including Fall Guys – Ultimate Knockout and Foul Play. The transaction marks a successful exit for Bloc Ventures, which invested in Marmalade in 2015.
Cristina Mereuta, joint CEO of Marmalade Game Studio, said: “We have seen people’s love for gaming blossom as they have fun and maintain connections with friends and family through gameplay. This has given us the opportunity to not only expand our portfolio of games, bringing some of the most well-loved titles to life in the digital world, but to continue recruiting the most exciting talent in the industry.”
Michael Willis, joint CEO of Marmalade Game Studio, added: “In LDC, we have a partner that is committed to backing our ambition and working closely with us to make our business plan a reality. It was also important to us that our backer was supportive of the strong working culture we have created, and we know from LDC’s track record they will help us to maintain the creative spirit and supportive environment that Marmalade is known for. With more game launches on the horizon and our recruitment drive ongoing, we’re excited to continue driving our expansion.”
Jacob Leone, Investment Manager at LDC in Manchester, added: “Michael and Cristina are truly inspirational leaders who have helped to transform Marmalade into the leading games business that it is today, nurturing strong relationships with its licensors to help bring classic games to life in the digital arena. The gaming industry has experienced exceptional growth in recent years, and Marmalade has seized the opportunity to provide players with the best quality games to enjoy.
Bruce Beckloff, CEO at Bloc Ventures, commented: “Marmalade’s growth has been impressive. Since Bloc’s investment in 2015, we’ve worked with the management team to combine efforts around their strong gaming backgrounds and key industry relationships with our company building experience. We’re fortunate to have been part of the journey and are excited to see what the future holds for Marmalade with LDC.”
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The complexity of health and disease cannot be captured by a singular diagnostic test and therefore can’t be expected to deliver true impact. Attempting to create a paradigm shift in diagnostics development by making them 10x more effective, faster and impactful is London-based early-stage biotech company Sanome.
The health startup has raised £2 million as its first round of funding from a number of leading UK and European health tech specialist investors. The round was led by Heal Capital, with participation from Crista Galli Ventures, Selvedge Ventures, o2h Ventures, Meltwind and a number of high-profile angels, including David Cleevely and Pam Garside.
The health startup has developed a diagnostics innovation engine that combines biomarkers to develop medical grade, at-home diagnostic products (IVDs) more efficiently and effectively. Most digital health, wearables and consumer biotech tools have limited medical use because it’s hard to validate them clinically. The startup’s novel approach leverages these existing technologies to develop at-home tests that are clinically validated to improve patient outcomes and reduce healthcare costs. Ultimately, laying the foundation for the early detection and prevention of diseases of high unmet need.
Sanome was founded by experienced entrepreneurs Benedikt von Thüngen, CEO of the group and Dr Marc van der Schee, Chief Medical Officer. They combine a unique set of experiences, including software, clinical, healthcare, AI/ ML and biomarker development, as well as having built and scaled multiple successful companies before, including Owlstone Medical and Speechmatics.
The investment will be used to expand the team across London, Amsterdam and Cambridge and deliver on key strategic and commercial partnerships to develop and validate the first set of IVD candidates.
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Digital department store Freemans has launched a full beauty offer, taking in big names and emerging brands across cosmetics, fragrance, haircare and skincare, and has issued a call for brands to pitch their products to the beauty team.
Freemans recently hired former Debenhams beauty buyer Michelle Fox to propel its beauty strategy and brands already secured, include Elizabeth Arden, Moschino, SVR, Pur Cosmetics, Revlon and James Read.
The beauty offer will continue to evolve and brands, large and small, wishing to be stocked on the site are invited to join the call by emailing beautycall@fgh-uk.com.
Linda Quinn, Chief Merchandise Officer at Freemans said of new launch: “Beauty is another important step on the journey to meet our ambition to become the UK’s online department store of choice.
“We are hugely excited to be able to launch and strengthen our beauty proposition at Freemans. Focused on creating an exciting destination for customers that are craving somewhere new to shop beauty. Freemans will give customers access to a fantastic selection of both established and emerging brands."
Freemans' beauty pedigree was strengthened even further last year when Richard Cristofoli joined Freemans as Chief Customer Officer. At Debenhams he had formerly been Managing Director, Beauty, Marketing and Digital. Under his tenure at Debenhams the team introduced and sold more premium beauty than any other retailer in the UK.
“The beauty call initiative we’re launching today is a simple way for brands to contact the beauty team directly. We appreciate the challenges of setting up a new brand and have a range of payment terms that are designed to nurture and support these emerging brands,” Cristofoli added.
As well as adding beauty, Freemans has been upping its fashion and lifestyle credentials by introducing new designer partnerships with names such as Julien Macdonald on fashion and lifestyle and former fashion designer Henry Holland on interiors.
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Patch, a new local workplace concept has been created to restore the balance between work, health and communities. As it eyes to launch its first ‘Work Near Home’ site in Chelmsford, the company eyes to revitalise commuter belt areas by offering community centres fit for the current era.
Now, Patch secured $1.1 million in a seed funding round led by industry heavyweight angel investors, including Robin Klein, Matt Clifford, Charlie Songhurst, Camilla Dolan, Zoe Jervier, Wendy Becker and Will Neale.
Patch’s ‘Work Near Home’ vision is to restore the balance between our work, our health and our communities. Patch wants ‘Work Near Home’ to be the cornerstone of the Post-Covid hybrid working era, building a platform to support more distributed and locally-based talent networks in towns across the UK.
While Patch’s first ‘Work Near Home’ site in Chelmsford will be opened early in November, several more sites are on cards for 2022. The company has received requests from knowledge workers in towns including Chester, St Albans, Wycombe, Shrewsbury, Yeovil, Bury and Kingston on Thames, where there are already growing waiting lists.”
Commenting on the opportunity, co-founder of Entrepreneur First and Code First Girls, and Patch investor Matt Clifford said: “Technology has always changed the way we organise and work together. Patch will unlock opportunities for talented people based on who they are, unconstrained by where they live. We want to be a country where high-skilled jobs are available everywhere and Patch is a key part of that puzzle.”
Gerard Grech, founding Chief Executive of Tech Nation said: ‘Talent is everywhere. Opportunity is not. This is why it’s exciting to see Patch helping to unlock the benefits that technology can bring to local economies across the country, especially post Cov-19, through the planned provision of high-quality workspaces and professional networks for people and businesses. We’re excited to see them start and scale such a business.”
Chelmsford Councillor Simon Goldman, Deputy Cabinet Member for Economic Development and Small Business and representative for the BID board, said: “The introduction of a new co-working space in Gray’s Yard is a really positive scheme for the city. Providing local options for residents to work from will help them to have less of a commute which will hopefully allow a better work/life balance. Working closer to home brings many benefits for both individuals and their families, but also for the environment and the local economy. I look forward to seeing what interesting people and businesses make use of the newly available space and help enhance Chelmsford’s business scene.”
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UK-fintech business lender MarketFinance is an online platform that lets businesses access a range of flexible finance solutions easily. Today, the fintech has secured £280 million debt and equity investment. Also, it has been accredited by the British Business Bank as a lender under Recovery Loan Scheme (RLS).
The debt financing was provided from a large global investment firm alongside Italy’s largest bank, Intesa Sanpaolo S.p.A. The equity investment was led by Black River Ventures that has backed Marqeta, Upgrade, Coursera, and Digital Ocean alongside participation from existing investor, Barclays Bank PLC.
MarketFinance intends to use the funds to help UK companies with business loans. It has launched Flex Loans, which is an unsecured flexible facility that will help SMEs solve their everyday cash flow problems. It aims to help nearly one million SMEs in the UK solve their short-term funding gaps up to £100,000.
Viola Credit has provided MarketFinance with £20 million to launch the Flex Loans product. Similar to a credit card or overdraft, businesses will have a pre-agreed limit of up to £100,000, which they can withdraw at once or in smaller amounts. Flexible repayment options enable the businesses to spread their repayments over 3 – 12 months based on their working capital needs.
This solution will support a variety of one-off and ongoing funding requirements, including purchasing inventory, clearing outstanding invoices, upfront supplier payments, investment into sales and marketing or expanding the team.
Besides the investment, MarketFinance became one of the first fintechs to be accredited under the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS), which lent £250 million to companies across the UK. Launched by the British Business Bank in April 2021, the Recovery Loan Scheme supports access to finance for UK businesses as they recover and grow following the pandemic.
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A global open banking platform based in London, TrueLayer, makes it easy for anyone to build better financial experiences. Now, the company announced that it has pocketed $130 million (nearly £95 million) in a funding round, which gives it a post-money valuation of over $1 billion, thereby making it a unicorn.
The investment round was led by New York-based tech investor Tiger Global Management LLC along with participation from Stripe, a global payments technology provider. TrueLayer will use the proceeds of this round to further scale its business and offer the benefits of instant bank payments to more markets as well as sectors.
Also, it will focus on continued product development and innovation, including PayDirect. The funds will also let the company continue its geographic expansion and strengthen its product, engineering and commercial teams worldwide.
“When Francesco and I founded TrueLayer it was with a belief that open banking would act as a catalyst for fundamental change in financial services. I’m incredibly proud of how we’ve built the firm, with a focus on quality engineering and user experience aligned to product development that delivers the best possible services,” commented Luca Martinetti, co-founder and CTO at TrueLayer. “That is reflected in the thousands of developers using our services, the talent we are retaining and the calibre of leaders we’re attracting from world-class technology and fintech companies. Our people buy into the vision for what we’re building and the journey ahead. It’s also reflected in the quality of our investors who believe in our ambition and are as excited as us about what comes next.”
Alex Cook, Partner, Tiger Global, said: “The shift to alternative payment methods is accelerating with the global growth of online commerce, and we believe TrueLayer will play a central role in making these payment methods more accessible. We’re excited to partner with Francesco, Luca and the TrueLayer team as they help customers increase conversion and continue to grow the network.”
In addition to the latest investment round, TrueLayer announced the launch of its PayDirect solution, Verification API, and Payouts solution. Also, it received its full EU authorisation from the Central Bank of Ireland and establishing its European HQ in Dublin.
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While we’ve managed to come up with ways to improve drug discovery and cure our own ailments, there’s been notably less headway for our pets. However, the Cambridge based startup PetMedix is working hard to develop new ways to invent drugs that can help relieve ailments for our pet companions. The company has now raised a notable £27 million in its series B funding round.
The latest funding round for PetMedix was led by Digitalis Ventures, and British funds Parkwalk Advisors. Additionally, Tencent and Japanese corporation Kyoritsu Holdings also participated, along with Cambridge Innovation Capital. The startup says this latest funding round will enable it to go from an R&D-stage to a clinical-stage international organisation.
In a conversation with UKTN, PetMedix’s co-founder Jolyon Martin says, ” These funds will take us from being a research-stage organisation to a development-stage one. We recently announced the first-ever canine trial with one of our antibodies, and were thrilled with the results. In the tech world, this would be our MVP or a very early beta.”
However, there’s still clinical trials and regulatory processes that the company needs to go through and it also has to set up manufacturing for each drug it develops. The startup currently consists of 40 people, almost all of which are scientists in its lab at Cambridge. The company expects to further grow the team in coming years.
PetMedix is a UK-focused biotech company that was founded in 2018. It spun out from the lab of Prof Allan Bradley FRS and is based upon the PhD work of his student, now PetMedix co-founder, Jolyon Martin. The company is developing the first, fully species-specific therapeutic antibodies for dogs and cats.
The company’s Ky9 and Felyne transgenic platforms are used to generate antigen-specific antibodies. As per PetMedix, they’ve generated over 50,000 fully canine, antigen-specific antibodies, which can help ensure that only high-quality therapeutic candidates advance to the clinics.
To reach this point, the startup had to face its fair share of challenges. As per Martin the key challenge is to break new scientific ground as a young company. “ Our scientists have frequently had to invent brand new techniques and solutions to achieve our technical goals.,” he notes. As for rivals, some players are still some ways away from showcasing their work on antibodies. Major players such as Elanco and Merck being one of them. Zoetis, on the other hand, has already launched a therapeutic antibody.
The global pet medicine market is estimated to be worth $17 B and is growing by 10% per year. With such innovation happening in the pet healthcare space, we try to understand what could be in store for the future for this sector.
“There are already some excellent companies working on DNA testing, gene therapy and cell therapies,” he concludes. Martin expects that every scientific and medical advance we’ve made for human health will eventually make it to animal health.
Berlin-based Mobius Labs is a next-generation AI-powered computer vision startup that disrupts how the world works with visual content. In a recent development, the startup secured €5.2 million (nearly £4.5 million) in a Series A funding round.
The investment round was led by European Venture Capital pioneer Ventech VC. Also, other investors that took part in the round include Atlantic Labs, APEX Ventures, Space Capital, Lunar Ventures and additional angel investors.
Mobius Labs has more than doubled its team over the last 18 months and has 30 employees now. It plans to use the funds to double its headcount in the next 12 months. Also, Mobius Labs will continue to accelerate its growth and expand its geographical footprint with a strong focus on Europe and US. The investment will partly go towards growing its presence in UK. Mobius Labs plans to open an office in the UK in early 2022.
The company celebrates twofold year-on-year growth while retaining all existing customers and plans to further strengthen its activities in the media and space sectors with geospatial intelligence a big focus area for its technology.
The company plans to improve core algorithms that power its few-shot capability feature and develop further algorithms for edge computing that can be deployed in many devices and scenarios including cameras, mobiles or satellites.
“I am very proud of what we have achieved at Mobius Labs so far but there is still a lot to be done. This new round of funding will help accelerate our plans and expand quickly as a company,” said Appu Shaji, CEO and Chief Scientist at Mobius Labs. “The last 18 months has been very challenging for many firms, but we have continued to grow throughout the pandemic while retaining all existing customers and look forward to enhancing our product and taking computer vision technology to the next level.”
“Appu and the team at Mobius Labs have developed an unparalleled offering in the computer vision space. Superhuman Vision™ is impressively innovative with its high degree of accuracy despite very limited required training to recognise new objects at excellent computational efficiency. We believe industries will be transformed through AI, and Mobius Labs is the European Deep Tech innovator teaching machines to see,” said Stephan Wirries, Partner at Ventech VC.
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One of the most significant players in the UK’s fintech industry, the insurtech sector has emerged as a clear winner. Even amid a myriad of economic disruptions caused by the pandemic, the sector has been reaping huge investments.
Adding to this intense competition in the sector is London-based digital motor insurance startup Marshmallow which has raised $85 million in a funding round that valued the company at $1.25 billion – making it Britain’s first and UK’s second unicorn to be founded by people of black heritage, following in the footsteps of WorldRemit.
The high-profile backers include Passion Capital, Investec and Scor.
Established in 2017 by identical twins Oliver and Alexander Kent-Braham along with David Goaté, the platform’s founding purpose was to modernise the insurance industry with the ultimate aim of using data to provide more affordable insurance to customers who fall outside the typical “good risk” profile.
The business’ innovative use of technology, big data and artificial intelligence has enabled it to grow into a serious challenger brand that aims to be one of the largest players in the insurance industry. It is one of just two UK ‘insurtechs’ to have secured an insurance licence, allowing it complete flexibility from quote to claim.
Marshmallow’s unique approach, comprising fair pricing, quick and efficient customer service and no charge for changes made to a policy, has driven growth of over 100% during the last six months with the company having sold well over 100,000 policies. The business’ headcount has also increased by more than by 200% in the past year, and with fresh funding, it expects to hire 400 people over the next 24 months. The Series B will also be used by Marshmallow to expand into other countries, continue to hire the best talent and build other products.
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The London-based startup for sharing of food and other items, OLIO, has closed a $43 million Series B funding round, to fund its fight against the $1.3 trillion of food waste created globally each year.
This latest fundraise saw existing investors Swedish investment firm VNV Global and New York-based hedge fund Lugard Road Capital become major investors in OLIO, supported by further funds from Accel, Octopus Ventures, Rubio plus technology entrepreneur and chair of Grimsby Town football club Jason Stockwood and media entrepreneur and politician Lord Waheed Alli. DX Ventures, the VC arm of food delivery firm Delivery Hero, is a new highly strategic investor in the round.
The women-led startup, founded in 2015 by Tessa Clarke and Saasha Celestial-One, has now amassed a user base of five million people. The hyperlocal food sharing app is used to give away unwanted food and other household items to neighbours, for free, with the aim of reducing waste in the home and helping people to consume more locally and sustainably.
It is the brainchild of Clarke, who struggled to find anyone to take the unwanted food from her fridge when she was moving home. Since its launch, the app has enabled over 25 million portions of food and three million non-food items to be saved from the bin.
This partnership will enable the app to accelerate its international expansion plans, and quickly grow the Food Waste Heroes Programme, which supports food businesses and restaurants around the world in their quest to achieve zero food waste locations.
After a year of rapid growth in the UK, the next generation community marketplace plans to build its presence across the world, focusing on 10 key markets in Latin America, Northern Europe and Asia, where the app has seen very strong organic growth.
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