News
London-based Payhawk, a fintech platform that unifies all company payments and expense management secured $20 million in a Series A funding round. This investment comes 12 months after completing its seed round.
The funding round was led by US-based fund QED Investors, which has a good track record of investing in 18 fintech unicorns including Klarna and Nubank. Also, existing investor Earlybird Digital East, which led $3.6 million seed funding in Payhawk in March last year participated in the round. Besides them, Yusuf Ozdalga will join the company’s board along with existing investors Mehmed Atici from Earlybird Digital East and Vassil Terziev from Eleven Ventures.
The funds will let Payhawk expand its product offering further and grow its team. The company will expand coverage for businesses outside the EU and UK, add new payment products including credit cards, and support additional currencies with industry-leading FX rates. Also, the fintech will also work to streamline the cash flow from existing bank accounts to Payhawk to provide unlimited spending capabilities for finance teams.
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Starling Bank, a UK digital bank is the fastest-growing bank for small and medium-sized enterprises in Europe. Today, the company pocketed £50 million as an extension to the bank’s oversubscribed £272 million Series D funding round last month.
The investment into Starling Bank came from Goldman Sachs Growth Equity. With this round, the overall Series D funding raised accounts to £322 million and values the company in excess of £1.1 billion pre-money. This fund will support Starling’s continued, rapid and now profitable growth.
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Buy Now Pay Later or BNPL is one of the fastest growing online payments methods in the UK. Companies in this space include some notable names, one of which is the London-based BNPL startup Zilch. The company is one of the fastest-growing BNPL providers in the UK, with thousands of signups a day. It is also the first and only UK FCA regulated BNPL, and it has now raised a notable £57.8 million in its series B funding round.
USA launch and team expansion
The latest series B funding round for Zilch was led by numerous investors, including Gauss Ventures and M&F Fund. Including the latest funds, the company has managed to raise over £86.7 million in funds and is currently valued at over £361.4. With fresh funds, the startup intends to launch its services in the USA and grow its services further, in the UK.
Zilch currently has over 80 employees in the UK and plans to double its team size this year. It recently hired some top executives such as Werner Kruger, ex VP of Data Science at Klarna, Monese’s ex-Chief Analytics Officer as their new Chief Data Officer and more recently, Amabel Polglase, ex-Head of Global Clients at Facebook, as Zilch’s Chief Marketing Officer.
“Some of these new hires will be used to build a US presence in anticipation of expansion. With this in mind, at the moment we’re focused on finding the right people that can help us achieve our goals, rather than limiting ourselves to a particular US location – remote working technology means that isn’t a problem anymore,” Belamant notes.
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A couple of weeks back, Weezy — the hyperlocal delivery startup, launched its service in Bristol. And now, the company has announced a partnership with what3words to make locations easier to find and every Weezy delivery seamless.
Co-founded in London in 2013 by Chris Sheldrick, what3words is a human-friendly way to share very precise locations with other people.
The company has divided the world into a grid of 3m squares and given each a unique what3words address – made of three dictionary words.
For example, the viewpoint at the top of Hampstead Heath can be found at ///single.glow.most.
Further, what3words is optimised for voice input and contains built-in error prevention to immediately identify and correct input mistakes.
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The Ocado Group, a leading UK-based online grocery platform and solutions provider announced the partnership with the Oxford-based startup Oxbotica to develop a range of autonomous vehicles. The company has invested $13.8 million (nearly £10 million) and bought stake in the startup that develops autonomous driving systems.
Part of Series B investment
This investment from Ocado is a part of Oxbotica’s latest Series B equity funding round. The round was led by bp ventures and included other strategic and financial investors in the US, the UK, China and Australia including Tencent, Halma, BGF, HostPlus, IP Group, Venture Science, and funds advised by Doxa Partners. As a result, Ocado will take a seat on Oxbotica’s board as well.
As part of this collaboration, Ocado will outfit a subset of its delivery vans and warehouse vehicles with data capture capabilities, which may include video cameras, LiDAR, RADAR and other sensing devices. Ocado will make this data available to Oxbotica to train and test its technologies, which will then inform Ocado as to what opportunities exist and where best it might take advantage of these exciting new partnerships.
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Springpod, a London and Liverpool, UK-based careers network that connects young people with employers & education providers, raised £2.25M in Series A funding.
The round was led by Triple Point, Cass Entrepreneurship Fund and Alliance Fund Managers, MSIF’s fund management subsidiary, alongside participation from existing investors.
The company intends to use the funds to launch its platform in new international territories.
Launched in 2018 by Sam Hyams and Oliver Fisher, Springpod is a specialist careers platform enabling young people to know the world of work and university in order to make informed decisions about their future through virtual work experience programs, virtual events and digital student engagement solutions.
Over 150,000 young people have now used the platform to engage with employers, universities and organisations.
Today, London-based leading seed investors LocalGlobe and its Series B sister fund, Latitude, announced to have raised $370m ($150m and $220m, respectively). The new funds will be used to double down on core markets in the UK and Europe, with a long-term view of generating world-class returns.
In the firm’s blog post, Julia Hawkins – General Partner – LocalGlobe said, “Since 2015, we have raised nearly $1bn in committed capital to invest in over 160 pre-seed and seed founders, as well as in breakout teams via our sister fund Latitude who we believe can become drivers of this next economy.”
LocalGlobe, which is predominantly focused on the UK, the seed-stage venture capital firm was founded by father and son duo Robin and Saul Klein, and one of the most active in the country.
Robin says “I would like (us) to be seen as a venture firm that reinvented venture, constantly pushed the boundaries forward and significantly contributed to its wider world and the community around it.”
In the last 12 months, LocalGlobe founders have raised over $2bn+ in follow-on funding (and over $6.5bn since 2015). The firm’s investment portfolio includes prominent names including, Yapily,Tide, Zego, Libeo and more.
Market-leading Berlin-based subscription startup Grover has today secured €60 million (nearly £52 million) in an oversubscribed Series B funding round involving a number of UK investors.
A number of UK investors are involved in the round, including circular economy PE firm Circularity Capital and Augmentum Fintech.
Of this, €45 million (nearly £39 million) came from new investors led by Jonathan Schneider at private equity firm JMS Capital-Everglen along with participation Viola Fintech, Assurant, founders and angel investors from North America and Europe and existing investors, including UK-based circular economy VC, PE firm Circularity Capital, Augmentum Fintech, Samsung Next, Seedcamp and more. Another €15 million (nearly £13 million) came as venture debt financing issued by European growth debt provider Kreos Capital.
Grover will use the funding to increase market penetration, advance product innovation and accelerate international expansion. It will also support its ambitious goals of tripling its subscriptions of 450,000 by the end of 2021. This will help it bring about a more circular approach to consumer electronics.
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Clim8 Invest is a UK-based investment platform meant to help consumers invest in companies focused on tackling climate change. The company announced the launch of its mobile app as sustainable funds outperformed the market in 2020. Also, the company raised $8 million (nearly £5.8 million) in funding.
The investment round was led by 7pc Ventures (early backers of Oculus, acquired by Facebook), British Business Bank Future Fund and technology entrepreneurs and executives including Marcus Exall (Monese), Marcus Mosen (N26), Paul Willmott (Lego Digital, McKinsey), Doug Scott (Redbrain), Matt Wilkins (Thought Machine), Andrew Cocker (Skyscanner), Steve Thomson (Redbrain), Monica Kalia (Neyber, Goldman Sachs), Doug Monro (Adzuna), and Erik Nygard (Limejump).
The investment comes after the company raised £2.4 million funding late last year. It will let consumers invest in companies and supply chains with a focus to tackle climate change.
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Apple and Google have blocked a new update to the NHS COVID-19 app on iOS and Android because it breaks rules about collecting location data.
The new update to the contact-tracing app, which garnered much publicity last year due to its development back-and-forths, delayed launch, and ‘software glitches’, would have asked users to upload venue check-ins, thereby sharing location data.
The update was set to be released to coincide with the reopening of outdoor hospitality venues in England, with pub gardens and terraces being allowed to welcome back guests on 12 April. If a person tested positive for COVID-19 after visiting a venue, other people who had also visited the place could be alerted of the possibility that they too might have contracted the virus.
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