News
Nimbla, the fintech business insurance startup from London, has announced a £5.1 million funding round led by Silicon Valley venture fund Fin VC with participation from Barclays Bank.
The funding comes as Nimbla seeks to scale its operations with increased demand from embedded credit risk solutions through its API with banks and alternative lending platforms.
Founded in 2016, the Nimbla platform has given businesses the confidence to trade with a peace of mind using invoice insurance with quotes provided within seconds. Their proprietary digital automated credit risk platform is able to process requests immediately and provide real time quotes. Nimbla has processed over 67m invoices worth £2.5b. During the pandemic, volumes of invoices tripled as economic uncertainty and supply chain concerns increased and Nimbla continued writing new business.
Flemming Bengtsen, CEO at Nimbla commented: “We have been growing steadily over the past few years, ramping up our technology and team to better understand businesses, the nature of B2B debt and to make faster decisions to serve our growing customer base. 2020 was a seminal year for Nimbla, at a time of global crisis, we were there for businesses enabling them to trade with a peace of mind and giving them confidence to carry on. This funding round will enable us to expand our platform, grow the team as we enable a confident and trusted trading environment for businesses across the UK and beyond”.
Nimbla has worked directly with businesses and brokers to provide invoice insurance cover and more recently has launched a new API for Banks, fintech lenders and B2B platforms to enable more business to access the service. Nimbla partnered with Barclays Bank in 2020 to give their one million small business customers the ability to take out insurance against individual invoices, rather than the whole book.
“We have built a powerful and robust credit risk model, automated large parts of the process and have now launched a new API to enable others to embed seamless credit risk solutions into their platforms” added Flemming Bengtsen.
On investing in funding round Henry Cashin, Head of EMEA at Fin VC, commented: “Nimbla is giving businesses the confidence to trade again. They have a proven credit risk model and its tech is being adopted by top tier banks and a host of lending platforms. We believe this will scale their reach and help more businesses benefit long term”.
Looking ahead, Flemming Bengtsen commented: “UK companies have added £1.9tn debt in 2020 to their balance sheets, taking the total amount outstanding to over £6.6tn. This number was inflated by the various government loan schemes. Over half of them are carrying ‘toxic debts’ which carries enormous risk for their trade creditors, there is a huge opportunity and responsibility for Nimbla to give companies a peace of mind and insure their invoices against insolvencies”.
Supply chain cyber breaches often result in personal data such as payment details, addresses and medical records being accessed by unauthorised third parties. Major supply chain cyber security breaches in 2021 at Accellion, Solarwinds and Microsoft have put the challenge of defending against supply chain breaches at the top of the agenda for every large organisation globally.
The Risk Ledger platform is a first-of-a-kind global network of connected organisations, all working together to defend as one against cyber attacks. This game-changing approach makes the platform ideal for almost any organisation trying to identify, measure and mitigate supply chain risks regardless of industry.
Headquartered in London, Risk Ledger is a cybersecurity company that manages cyber security risks in supply chains. Now, the company has bagged £2.1 million in a seed funding round. The investment round was led by Finnish VC Lifeline Ventures with participation from Seedcamp, firstminute Capital, Episode 1 and Village Global.
The proceeds of this round will help Risk Ledger grow its team and operations to fully capitalise on the heightened focus on supply chain security driven by all the new regulations and high-profile breaches.
Haydn Brooks, founder and CEO at Risk Ledger commented: “The past 18 months have been a period of rapid growth in the company. We grew our client base and our user numbers have sky-rocketed despite the significant economic disruption caused by the pandemic. We have expanded the product into non-cyber security factors, including ESG and financial supply chain risks. Testament to the wider scope of the platform, we are now engaging procurement leaders in companies as well as their information security counterparts.”
Petteri Koponen, founding partner at Lifeline Ventures said: “We wanted to be part of Risk Ledger’s growth journey because they have the right product at the right time. With supply chain breaches becoming mainstream and regulators globally mandating better management of the risks, the Risk Ledger platform is in a fantastic position to become the industry agnostic tool of choice and penetrate the market extensively. The potential for the platform to proliferate virally is also unique. Capturing 30% of the UK water market in just over a year shows this possibility which is exciting for us.”
Founded by Haydn Brooks, Risk Ledger is a rising star of the UK’s growing cyber security industry that has won several competitions run by the UK Government’s National Cyber Security Centre and many others. Also, the company is a member of the UK Government backed LORCA programme (London Office of Rapid Cybersecurity Advancement).
Risk Ledger’s client base includes a wide range of organisations including NHS Test & Trace, BAE Systems Applied Intelligence, City of London Police, Schroders Personal Wealth and ASOS among others. Recently, the Risk Ledger platform was able to help the NHS Test & Trace team identify complex vulnerabilities in multiple interdependent suppliers that provide key reagents to the organisation.
UK health tech company that offers same-day prescription medicine delivery in London and next day delivery throughout the UK, Pharmacierge has announced it has raised £1.25 million from a number of leading clinicians and angel investors.
Investors include Alex Chesterman OBE, founder of Cazoo and Zoopla and Simon Franks, who co-founded Lovefilm. In a show of confidence from the medical profession, many practitioner users have also invested in the round, including two past presidents of the Independent Doctors Federation, and clinicians practicing variously at the Schoen Clinic, One Welbeck, Hormone Health, Physicians Clinic, Cromwell, Wellington, Lister and King Edward VII Hospitals.
Pharmacierge co-founder Robert Ungar said: “The healthcare industry faces a number of challenges, not least due to the widespread disruption from Covid-19. Cumbersome and paper-based processes need to be replaced by streamlined apps that are quick and easy, both for the clinician and the patient. A fast and reliable delivery service for prescription medication is therefore a requirement for private clinicians who put patient-centered care at the heart of their practice.”
Founded in London in 2015, the med tech startup operates its own dispensary and supplies all common medicines. Due to the variety of Consultants it supports, its formulary contains more than double the range of medicines listed by an average NHS trust. The technology solves all the clinical management problems: combining seamless dispensing with courier delivery, and updating doctors and patients as to their prescriptions’ progress.
With the money raised, Pharmacierge will now look to expand its footprint throughout the UK and internationally, as well as growing its network of clinicians.
Private medical practices currently spend up to two hours a day on prescription-related admin tasks, totaling more than 50 working days per year across their practice. The Pharmacierge e-prescription app, mPrescribe, can cut admin by up to 15 minutes per prescription with integrated same day or next day delivery. This saves time for clinicians, their administrative staff and ultimately their patients.
mPrescribe, the platform’s iPhone and Android enabled app, is the first of its kind in the UK; a portable e-prescription pad that allows clinicians to prescribe medication on the go. Its seamless infrastructure is built on proprietary full-stack technology, combining Electronic Prescription (EPS) and dispensary management (ERP) systems, with multiple APIs to handle the compliance and complexity of this tightly regulated industry.
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On a mission to empower hundreds of millions of consumers and businesses globally to take action by measuring, reducing and compensating for their impact, carbon footprint tracking expert Cogo has kicked off a $20 million Series A funding round just weeks ahead of the COP26 UN climate summit.
The team behind the platform, based in Wellington, London, Melbourne and New York is now expanding rapidly as what the company calls the ‘conscious consumerism’ movement grows. The impact-led fintech has announced partnerships with several of the world’s 50 largest banks ahead of the raise, including NatWest (UK), CommBank (Australia) and Santander (Spain). The tracker’s API will shortly go live to 8,000,000 NatWest customers, after launching earlier this month with CommBank Australia. Meanwhile it’s app (powered by open-banking and available in the UK) has had over 100,000 downloads.
The startup plans to open up the round to its API customers and app users in a move that, according to Ben Gleisner, CEO and founder of Cogo, will place the power of ownership in the hands of those who are creating value for the company. “Already, over 300 of our shareholders are staff, customers or users, and we believe that further decentralising our ownership model is simply the right thing to do. Too many tech company ownership models are benefiting only a few; and we want to be a platform owned by, and built for, the people,” he says.
The round has garnered major interest from global impact and fintech funds and a number of Cogo’s corporate customers, and there is significant follow-on demand from their existing shareholder base.
Gleisner comments: “The investment round was not something we had planned so early, but we simply can’t keep up with the opportunities arriving in our inboxes. With this in mind we are raising funds to help grow our company; decentralise its ownership and, ultimately, scale our impact. Businesses and consumers are looking for greater transparency around their carbon footprint and we’re moving as fast as we can to make Cogo the go-to solution for the world’s largest enterprises.”
In August, Cogo announced a first-of-its kind collaboration with Experian (Australia), the world’s leading global information services company.
“It’s one thing for large businesses to embark on a sustainability journey. It’s quite another for them to invite customers or subscribers to take that journey with them. Now, using Cogo, that second step is easy and will enable us to harness the power of millions of consumers worldwide to make a powerful collective difference,” explains Gleisner.
Cogo’s applications and APIs help consumers and businesses to understand, reduce and offset their carbon footprints, and align their spending with their environmental and social values.
For NatWest, Cogo enables customers to see the CO2 emissions associated with their daily spending, as well as tips on going greener and resources for doing so. Insights from the NatWest pilot showed the average user saved approximately 11 kg of CO2 emissions per month by committing to behavioural changes that used less carbon – such as composting, reducing meat consumption, or switching utilities providers. If this behaviour was replicated across NatWest’s 8 million customers who use the mobile app, it would save more than 1 billion kg of CO2 emissions per year, equivalent to planting 17 million trees.
Gleisner says the Series A funding will be used to invest in the scalability of its product, and launch into the North American, European and Asian markets. Due to early interest, the round is expected to close in early December. “There’s never been a more important time to impact the world’s carbon footprint by enabling repeatable, purposeful exchanges between the two biggest global contributors to over-consumption: businesses and consumers. That’s where real change starts,” concludes Gleisner.
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Mediaspace.global, the new B2B professional networking platform for the media, marketing, tech, regulation, and innovation industry will be hosting FLOWW TALKS FUNDING with Annabel Acton in collaboration with Floww, a fundraising platform for startups and investors on 26th October at 11am BST in partnership with UKTN.
Starting with this event, Mediaspace and Floww are about to invite all innovators, investors, fundraising services and superconnectors in the related verticals, including the mediatech, adtech, martech, social, gaming, consumertech segments.
When Mediaspace Founder, Kinga Incze started fundraising after graduating from the NewChip Accelerator Programme virtually in Texas in September, she recognised that startup events are very generic except for a few sectors such as FinTech. There’s a lot of money out there but it’s hard to find the right investors and vice versa.
Amongst other things Kinga looked at fundraising platforms and through her search she crossed paths with Lisa Winning and Ben Olson at Floww, the platform that connects startups and investors in a network of merit and real data. When they understood that Mediaspace.global is offering digital networking and online discussion groups for Leadership Club members to build their own ’tribes’ globally via online meetups and platform features, it was a no-brainer for the two parties to join forces.
FLOWW invited Annabel Acton, Creative Director at Afterwork Ventures and Co-Founder of Neverlikeditanyway.com who will be hosting the event on 26th October. The conversation will start with a panel discussion with Martijn De Wever, CEO of Floww and Magda Lukaszewicz, VC at Balderton Capital and Kinga Incze, CEO and Founder of Mediaspace.global.
The discussion will follow with a chance for participants not just to ask questions but meet and interact with each other by having short introductions. How is it different? Members-to-members conversation provide an informal, personal, not-pitch-event format for meeting relevant people, not profiles – outside everyone’s current circles.
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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.