News
MMC Ventures, a UK-based venture capital firm, has launched the £52m MMC Greater London Fund as part of the Mayor of London’s new initiative – the Greater London Investment Fund.
The MMC Greater London Fund (GLF) will enable investment into innovative, high-potential digital companies in London to accelerate their growth with valuable connections, resources and experience. It will invest at Seed and Series A.
The new fund will primarily back companies already based in London and also seek investments in businesses either relocating to London or opening or expanding an office in London, providing local support to the business and any co-investors.
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Sharing economy insurance provider Pikl announces completion of a £2.5m Seed/Pre-Series A fund raise led by Sir Peter Wood, founder of Direct Line and esure.
Pikl, which was founded in 2016, has focused on working collaboratively with the insurance market to try and stimulate industry change to support users in the sharing economy. Its industry report published in March highlighted that the insurance needs of over 1 million short-term rental hosts are not being adequately accommodated by the UK’s major insurers. They are either being excluded from, compromised by or voided from their existing home insurance policies.
Pioneering insurance for the burgeoning sharing economy, Pikl has initially targeted the Airbnb market, developing products for sharing platforms, property managers and individuals – many of which are market firsts – and are sold both wholesale to the insurance market and directly to customers.
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SeedLegals, a London, UK-based legal platform for startups to streamline fundraising, closed a $4m Series A funding.
The platform allows companies to build and negotiate terms sheets, shareholder agreements, cap tables, stock option allocations, EIS approvals, hiring agreements, NDAs and more. The company has also introduced two new ways for companies to raise funding: SeedFAST and Instant Investment enable startups to top up investment between funding rounds.
The round was led by Index Ventures with participation from Kima Ventures, The Family and existing investor Seedcamp. In conjunction with the funding, Hannah Seal from Index Ventures joined SeedLegals’ board.
The company intends to use the funds to accelerate international expansion.
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yulife, a London, UK-based life insurance company which puts wellbeing at the core of its insurance offering, secured £10m in Series A funding.
The round was led by Creandum Funds, with participation from MMC Ventures and Notion Capital and existing investors Anthemis Exponential Ventures, RGAX and OurCrowd.
Founded in 2016 by serial entrepreneur Sammy Rubin, yulife is a life insurance company which rewards its members for living well now, as well as protecting the people around them in the future. It addresses the needs of large companies and SMEs alike, offering an end to end digital journey to streamline the buying process, and engaging with each member directly via their wellbeing app, which encourages members to complete simple wellbeing activities, such as walking or meditation, by rewarding them with Avios air miles, vouchers and gift cards from partner brands including Amazon and ASOS.
The company plans to use the funds to further develop their product and reach more businesses.
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Global Payments Inc, the payment technology company, is nearing a deal to acquire peer Total System Services Inc (TSYS) for about $20bn (£15.74bn) in an all-stock deal.
The financial technology sector is consolidating fast, with global payments set to reach $3 trillion a year in revenue by 2023 as more people switch from cash to digital payments for online and high street sales.
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The venture capital arm of Salesforce has closed its second fund for European tech startups at $125m (£98.7m), with a renewed focus on enterprise cloud.
Salesforce Ventures said it was the most active corporate VC in Europe last year, making investments across the spectrum in digital payments, artificial intelligence and blockchain.
It follows the software giant's first fund, launched in Europe in 2015 at $100m. Previous British investments from Salesforce's first fund include Gocardless, Privitar and Onfido.
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Online shopping platform Zalando is looking to reduce waste and carbon dioxide emissions. Makeup products will now be shipped in paper bags instead of plastic, and the company is testing reusable packaging for returns, it announced on Wednesday.
Ecommerce must become more environmentally friendly, said board member David Schneider at the firm’s AGM in Berlin. This will be key to the company’s success.
However, in the last financial year Zalando saw average order values decline, triggering more shipments regardless of packaging.
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Money Dashboard, the personal finance app, raised more than £2 million within 24 hours yesterday after launching Scotland’s biggest fintech crowdfunding exercise privately to its user base.
The Edinburgh-based company, now valued at £21m, smashed its initial target of £1.5m within 45 minutes and over the course of the day saw 1,037 users invest in the business. The cash call on the Crowdcube platform is now open to the public.
Money Dashboard’s management app helps more than 200,000 people handle their finances. The app connects to over 60 financial institutions. It generates revenue from insightful market research based on anonymised banking data. This gives data clients critical insight into how businesses, such as Deliveroo or Uber, are performing.
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OpenFin, a New York and London-based operating system (OS) of finance, raised $17m in Series C funding.
The round, which brought OpenFin’s total amount of venture funding to $40m, was led by Wells Fargo with participation from Barclays and existing investors including Bain Capital Ventures, J.P. Morgan and Pivot Investment Partners.
The company intends to use the funds for further product innovation, including its new Cloud Services offering, which enables banks, asset managers, wealth managers and hedge funds to provide their own private app stores for employees and customers out of the box.
Led by Mazy Dar, CEO and Co-Founder, OpenFin provides a desktop operating system which enables financial services firms to build new applications with modern web technology while enabling secure integration with legacy applications.
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Angela Ahrednts's, the high-profile luxury retail executive, appointment comes at a time when the start-up is pushing for more luxury home listings.
The highly successful executive joins the home-sharing start-up after a five-year stint overhauling Apple Inc.’s retail operations and more than eight years as chief executive of British high-end fashion house Burberry Group Plc. Airbnb, which is preparing for a public stock offering next year, has been broadening its mission to become an end-to-end travel company, and has been moving to add more luxury listings to its six million homes on offer.
Ahrendts has been consistently named a Top 100 Global Executive in rankings by Forbes and Fortune. During her tenure at Burberry, Ahrendts transformed the company into a global luxury brand, tripling the business.
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