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Based in London, Noetic Cyber is a new entrant to cyber asset and controls management markets. The company uses a cloud-based platform to provide teams with unified visibility of all assets to make faster, more accurate decisions to detect coverage gaps and reduce cyber risk.
Recently, the cybersecurity startup has raised $20 million (approx £14.4 million) funding in a Series A round led by Energy Impact Partners, with participation from existing seed investors TenEleven Ventures and Glasswing Ventures.
In addition, Noetic is adding depth to its board of directors, with the appointment of Alan Kessler as an independent board member. Alan was previously the CEO of Thales e-Security and serves on the boards of BlackSky, Thales, and Sotero.
Founded by Paul Ayers, Allen Rogers, and Allen Hadden, Noetic Cyber helps security teams better understand cyber risks by building a map of the relationship between their assets and entities, along with context and insights to make faster, more accurate decisions.
“Good cyber asset management is foundational to addressing the inherent friction between the IT and security teams, as it provides both parties with an accurate view of assets to defend, potential security gaps and priorities to address,” said Chris Steffen, research director, information security, Enterprise Management Associates. “Noetic is able to help to bridge the gap between the CISO and the IT organisation, with an innovative approach to cyber asset management that provides immediate value.”
The platform has a rich automation workflow engine as a core part of the solution, enabling security teams to anticipate and react to changing IT and security requirements.
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Currently, many NHS Trusts use spreadsheets or outdated systems to manage their complex rota systems. This leaves individuals with little to no control over the hours or days they work. If a staff member is unwell or a ward is understaffed, NHS teams have to manually contact temporary staff or resort to expensive recruitment agencies to fill the gaps.
London-based Patchwork Health founded by NHS doctors replaces this rigid, analogue staffing infrastructure with modern, intuitive workforce systems. Its technology and services transform NHS workers’ service, be it full-time or temporary staff.
In a recent development, the healthcare staffing platform has bagged £3.5 million to accelerate their mission to solve the NHS burnout crisis. The funding round was led by Praetura Ventures and BMJ New Ventures. Both have backed the business for several years and are committed to continuing their support as Patchwork grows.
Dr Anas Nader, who co-founded Patchwork Health with Dr Jing Ouyang after they both witnessed the impact of staffing inefficiencies first-hand as NHS doctors, said: “The NHS is facing a workforce crisis. “We’re already partnering with over 70 NHS sites to tackle the root causes of burnout, offer full-time and temporary staff more choices, and create stronger staffing foundations for hospitals. Through our technology and services, flexible work and safely staffed wards can go hand in hand. We’re so grateful to our NHS partners, and to the teams at Praetura Ventures and BMJ New Ventures, for making this possible and enabling us to scale up our services at a time of critical need.”
David Foreman, Managing Director at Praetura Ventures and Non-Executive Director of Patchwork, added: “We’re delighted to be supporting the Patchwork team. From the moment we met Anas and Jing, we could see the passion for their business. Patchwork is helping to solve a staffing crisis in the NHS. They’ve made real strides over the last 18 months and have the potential to make seismic changes in the way we organise staff in one of the world’s largest healthcare systems. At a time when there’s so much pressure on the frontline, innovative platforms like Patchwork will help us shape a better future for this critical industry whilst continuing to maintain high levels of patient care. Everyone at Praetura Ventures is excited to help Patchwork build something that’s going to benefit so many people.”
Anca Babor, BMJ’s Strategy Director, said: “We are excited to continue to support Patchwork Health in their next stage of growth – it’s a testament to the great progress the team is making and the strong partnership we have built together. A recent editorial in The BMJ argued that improving staff health and wellbeing is far from being a “nice to have,” it is a moral, social, and economic priority. Patchwork plays an important role in achieving this goal, and we are proud to be part of their journey towards a transparent, fair, and efficient workforce planning system that will ultimately improve patient care and create a healthier world.”
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The femtech industry is expected to become a $50 billion market by 2025. To capitalise on this growth, London-based Elvie, a leading femtech startup that develops iconic and smart products for women has bagged £58 million in a Series C funding round.
The investment round was led by BGF along with further investment from funds and accounts managed by BlackRock Private Equity Partners (“BlackRock”) and a consortium including Hiro Capital and Westerly Winds. Also, existing investors Octopus Ventures and IPGL took part in the round.
The Series C funds will be used to invest in three key areas including innovation and the development of new best-in-class products and services for women, continued expansion into new and existing markets, and strengthening Elvie’s operations and infrastructure ready for the next phase of high-speed growth.
Furthermore, the company will bolster the existing senior team by roping in Daina Spedding, BGF, and Persefoni Noulika, BlackRock to its board. This follows the recent hire of Sarah Highfield, who joined as COO and CFO in September 2020.
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Selfridges’ owner the Weston family has reportedly begun a formal auction of the department store business, with bids expected to start at £4 billion.
Advisor Credit Suisse is expected to distribute information memoranda to potential buyers and a deal, which may be completed by the end of the year.
The sale process follows an unsolicited approach to buy Selfridges, which emerged last month.
Sovereign wealth funds, such as Adia, the Public Investment Fund of Saudi Arabia, and the Qatar Investment Authority, have been named as interested bidders.
The Westons are likely to consider the extent to which any interested parties value sustainability as Selfridges has put sustainability at the heart of its strategy.
Selfridges’ property assets alone are worth £2 billion.
It is understood the sale process is being run from North America by Robin Rankin, Credit Suisse’s co-head of mergers and acquisitions, who is advising Pavi Binning, now special adviser to the Weston family.
Selfridges’ profits have doubled in the past decade thanks to investments such as an in-store skating bowl and cinema.
In its most recently reported financial year, Selfridges Group’s holding company SHEL Holdings said the pandemic “had a significant short-term impact on the group’s profitability” but it has “committed support from its ultimate parent company”.
Clearly a lot is happening in the global online grocery market right now and the UK is no behind. Online grocery shopping has skyrocketed up 230% compared to pre-pandemic levels. A host of European and UK startups have launched with the promise of delivering grocery online within 10-15 minutes and they all are battling each other fiercely in this race of fastest first.
The current generation of online grocery startups is flawlessly trying to address issues like fighting for slots, damaged goods, disappointing substitutions, and poor time management by building their own fulfillment centres. In industry terms, it is dubbed as Dark Stores or Cloud Stores — basically, they are only for delivering internet orders. Once the order is placed via an app, items will be picked, packed, and delivered to customers.
As per industry experts, this full-stack or vertical approach and the visibility it provides are supposed to produce enough supply chain and logistics efficiency to make the unit economics work.
While £9.8 billion has been invested into the super-fast delivery market globally and with the UK having a plethora of speedy online grocery delivery apps ready to bring fresh and branded groceries to consumer’s doorsteps competing with the likes of Ocado, Waitrose, Tesco and Whole Foods, we at UKTN take a look at how they compete with each other in terms of price, delivery time and products they offer and more.
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B2B software is a trillion-dollar industry and Europe has become the centre of this industry-defining tech. London-based Dawn Capital is one of the leading specialist B2B software investors in Europe. Now, it has closed Dawn Opportunities Fund II and raised $120 million (nearly £86 million) to continue investing growth funds to its best-performing portfolio companies.
With this later stage capital, Dawn can provide founders with a source of European investment. As a specialist, hands-on investor, it also ensures Dawn’s portfolio company founders benefit from Dawn’s team’s long-term support and expertise as they help guide them from Series A to successful IPOs and large M&A transactions.
The Dawn Opportunities Fund II follows the footsteps of its predecessor Dawn Opportunities I, which made its first investment, in a Series D round for Collibra, the world’s leading data intelligence platform, in January 2019.
The new fund will invest up to $30 million in the Series C+ growth rounds of the best-performing companies within its flagship portfolio. It will make investments into the companies that continue to prove their value and category dominance, in turn enabling its investors to capture the inherent value in these companies to exit.
The fund received strong support from Dawn’s existing LP base as well as attracting new investors from the US and Europe. The investors committing to the fund comprise global blue-chip institutions investors, including endowment funds, fund of funds, asset managers and family offices, and illustrious group of HNWs including Dawn’s portfolio founders.
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Mental health and effects of anxiety can have a far-reaching impact on productivity. Hence, in an uncertain world like ours, an ever-increasing number of employers are implementing changes that foster mental wellness for their employees. Add to it the trauma and uneasiness caused by the pandemic, more organisations are attempting to focus on the emotional health of employees recovering from Covid, blurred work-life boundaries in the ‘work from home’ context to keep employees connected, engaged and motivated in the extended remote work environment. In the UK, the Office for National Statistics has noted the pandemic is creating ‘a rising toll on mental health, with many people not necessarily accessing medical help.’
As these companies struggle with unprecedented strain on their employees’ mental health, they still lack a dedicated solution. While some of them offer insurance and wellbeing solutions to address employees’ physical health, a proper mental healthcare solution that covers the broad spectrum of both employee and manager needs hasn’t been available until now.
Entering this space is UK-based Oliva, which has launched the first comprehensive online mental healthcare solution for businesses in the UK and Europe. The mental wellness startup has also announced a £2.2 million new pre-seed investment led by Atomico cofounder Mattias Ljungman’s new Moonfire Ventures, with participation of numerous tech founders and executives in Europe.
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Corporate payments have traditionally happened via bank transfers or corporate credit cards. Both these methods bring a unique set of administrative hassles and security risks. And, of course, once the transactions are complete, there is a haze of receipts, expense reports, reimbursements, budgets, and analysis – none of which is connected. Attempting to solve this issue is London-headquartered Soldo, the digital solution to this incredibly costly challenge.
The leading European pay and spend automation platform has announced today it has closed $180 million in an oversubscribed Series C funding round, a European record for the spend management category.
Offering businesses real-time visibility
The fundraise was led by Temasek, a leading global investor headquartered in Singapore. The round includes new investors Sunley House Capital, Advent International’s crossover fund, Citi Ventures and continued backing from Accel, Battery Ventures, Dawn Capital, and Silicon Valley Bank for debt financing. Goldman Sachs acted as the exclusive placement agent to Soldo for the deal.
This investment follows an impressive 4x growth in spend volume across the company’s platform since series B, despite the backdrop of the challenging macro-economic environment.
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Blackstone is acquiring a majority stake in Bangalore and San Francisco-headquartered edtech startup Simplilearn for $250 million.
Simplilearn operates an eponymous online bootcamp to help people learn data science, AI, machine learning, cloud computing and other skills that are in demand in the market.
The startup has partnerships with several universities and colleges including IIT Kanpur, Caltech, and Purdue University and students enrolling and completing these courses get a certificate from these institutes.
The 11-year-old startup, which runs 1,000 live classes each month, says it has helped over 2 million professionals and 2,000 companies including Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon across 150 countries.
The startup, which was last valued at $80 million in its 2016 Series C funding round, counts Brand Capital, Kalaari Capital, Helion Venture Partners, and Mayfield among its early backers. It had raised about $34.4 million prior to today’s deal, according to insight platform Tracxn.
Kalaari Capital, Helion Venture Partners and Mayfield Fund have taken exit as part of the new transaction but the leadership team of Simplilearn haven’t sold their stakes, according to a person familiar with the matter.
“The pandemic has only accelerated the need for digital skills and the industry has demonstrated absolute readiness for upskilling online. Hence, this is the most opportune time to take the next big leap in our journey to build the world’s largest digital skilling company,” said Krishna Kumar, founder and chief executive of Simplilearn, in a statement.
“We believe Blackstone can add significant value to our company because of their scale, commitment to building businesses, and global network, which will enable us to develop partnerships with businesses and universities as Simplilearn continues to expand around the world.”
The acquisition comes months after Blackstone-backed Aakash Education Services, which runs coaching centres across the country, was acquired by Byju’s — India’s most valuable startup — for nearly $1 billion. Blackstone has since also made an investment in Byju’s.
“This is Blackstone’s first private equity investment in Asia in a consumer technology company. […] We are excited to partner with Krishna Kumar and Simplilearn’s top-notch management team to accelerate growth and build the world’s pre-eminent digital learning company, and we expect this to be the first of many such investments in Asia,” said Amit Dixit, head of Asia for Blackstone, in a statement.
Tencent has announced plans to buy British video game company Sumo Group for $1.27 billion. The Chinese tech giant already has an 8.75-percent stake in the developer, as Gamesindustry.biz reports, and the offer represents a 43-percent premium on Sumo’s current valuation.
Based in Sheffield, England, Sumo’s well-regarded core studio Sumo Digital has carried out contract work for many of the biggest names in gaming. It developed Sony’s PlayStation 5 launch title Sackboy: A Big Adventure and was the primary studio behind Microsoft’s Crackdown 3 for Xbox consoles and PC. In 2017 Sumo released Snake Pass for multiple platforms, its first foray into original IP.
“The three founders of Sumo, who work in the business, Paul Porter, Darren Mills and I are passionate about what we do and are fully committed to continuing in our roles,” says Sumo CEO Carl Cavers in a statement. “The opportunity to work with Tencent is one we just couldn’t miss. It would bring another dimension to Sumo, presenting opportunities for us to truly stamp our mark on this amazing industry, in ways which have previously been out-of-reach.”
Cavers says Tencent has “demonstrated its commitment to backing” Sumo’s client work, as well as its own original IP, so things are unlikely to change too quickly. The buyout does, however, give Tencent yet another foothold in the international gaming industry, following prominent investments in companies like Epic, Riot, Activision, and Ubisoft.
“Tencent intends to bring its expertise and resources to accelerate the growth of Sumo both in the UK and abroad, supporting Sumo in the market for top-notch creative talent, and the UK as a hub for game innovation,” says Tencent’s chief strategy officer James Mitchell. “We believe the proposed transaction benefits all stakeholders, delivers compelling value for Sumo shareholders, while enhancing the Sumo business for the future.”
This would be the second billion-dollar deal involving a British game developer this year — EA completed its acquisition of racing game specialists Codemasters for a similar price in February.