News
TempoCap, a pan-European technology investor, has announced that its portfolio company Depop is to be acquired by Etsy. Inc for $1.6 billion (approx £1.14 billion).
According to the VC, the transaction marks a watershed moment for the European scaleup ecosystem, as the largest venture-backed acquisition of a private technology company in the UK since 2019.
Founded in 2011 by Simon Beckerman, Depop is a community-powered marketplace app, where users buy and sell unique fashion. At present, the platform is home to 21 million+ stylists, designers, artists, collectors, vintage sellers, and more.
Around 90% of Depop’s active users are under the age of 26, claims the company. As a part of the acquisition, TempoCap expects an 11x cash-on-cash return in 3.5 years at closing.
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Based out of London, Penfold is a digital pension platform managed fully on your mobile phone. Recently, the company has secured £6 million in funding, £3 million of which was from a crowdfunding campaign. The funding round was led by Bridford Investments Limited.
Other investors including Force Over Mass Capital, Elkstone Capital, and several angel investors, including Alan Morgan of MMC Ventures and other senior figures in the finance industry, also participated. With this funding round, Penfold has raised £9 million.
The capital will be used to fund further growth for the business – expanding the team and activating an out-of-home marketing campaign.
Founded by Pete Hykin, Stuart Robinson, and Chris Eastwood in 2019, Penfold is a digital alternative to traditional pension companies, allowing users to set up, manage and track their pensions easily online and via the app.
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Ada Health is a global health company that simplifies healthcare journeys and helps people take care of themselves. Recently, the Berlin-based firm has secured $90 million (approx £63.3 million) funding in Series B round led by Leaps by Bayer, the impact investment arm of Bayer AG.
Other investors including Samsung Catalyst Fund, Vitruvian Partners, Inteligo Bank, F4, and Mutschler Ventures, also participated.
The investment will be used to advance Ada’s popular health assessment technology and to grow its position in the United States. Besides funding, Bayer and Ada Health are in discussions about entering into a longer-term strategic partnership to support the company’s healthcare businesses.
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Paysend, a London, UK-based payments fintech company, raised $125m in Series B funding.
The round was led by One Peak, with participation from Infravia Growth Capital, Hermes GPE Innovation Fund, and existing long-term investors including Silicon Valley based Plug and Play.
The company intends to use the funds to accelerate growth of the platform.
Led by CEO Ronnie Millar, Paysend is an integrated global payment ecosystem enabling consumers and businesses to pay and send money online anywhere, anyhow in any currency. The company has its own global network of banks, international and local payment systems, and has partnerships with the major international card networks Visa, Mastercard and China Union Pay as a principal member and certified processor. Paysend recently opened its US and Canada operations and secured a partnership with Alipay in order to grow its global presence.
The company supports connections between 12 billion cards globally across Mastercard, Visa, China UnionPay and local card schemes and provides over 40 payment methods for online SMEs. Paysend operates in over 60 countries worldwide and has attracted more than 3.7 million consumers and over 17,000 businesses to its platform.
PointGrab, a London UK-based company which specializes in the creation of smart sensors for businesses to maintain social distancing in post-COVID offices, raised £3.4M in funding.
The round was led by EMV Capital.
The company intends to use the funds to accelerate the rollout of its platform.
Led by Doron Shachar, CEO, PointGrab is a machine learning and computer vision PropTech company that provides smart sensing solutions to the building automation and facilities management industry. PointGrab provides a Smart Sensing Platform, which helps to track staff to keep them COVID-safe, to new and existing customers, distancing alerts, cleaning capabilities and smart analytics will help workplaces reopen.
Other investors in the company included ABB Ventures, Signify, and various family offices.
London-based Tessian, a cybersecurity company that uses machine learning to automatically predict and eliminate advanced threats on email caused by human error, has bagged $65 million (nearly £46 million) in a Series C funding round.
The investment round was led by March Capital, a VC firm that had backed cybersecurity unicorns – CrowdStrike and KnowBe4. Also, existing investors, including Accel, Latitude, Balderton Capital, and Sequoia Capital participated in this round alongside new investor Schroder Adveq. With this, the total investment in Tessian is now $120 million (nearly £85 million) and its valuation is now $500 million (nearly £353 million).
Tessian wants to use the investment to accelerate its mission of quantifying and preventing human risk in global enterprises and empowering people to do their best work without security getting in the way. The company will expand its platform’s capabilities, helping companies replace their secure email gateways and legacy data loss prevention solutions, and will soon expand beyond email to secure other interfaces like messaging, web, and collaboration platforms. Also, Tessian eyes to triple its rapidly growing employee base with a specific focus on its sales team in North America.
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Overture Life, the IVF process automation startup recently announced that it has raised $15M in Series B funding, bringing its fundraising total to $37M as it continues to attract investments in its mission to democratize in-vitro fertilization (IVF).
The round was led by London-based Octopus Ventures, one of Europe’s largest and most active early-stage investors, Google Ventures also participated in the round, in its first Spain-based investment. Additional investment was received from existing investors such as Khosla Ventures, Felicis Ventures, and Marc Benioff, who were all early backers of the company.
Overture Life strives to democratise processes in assisted reproduction to make them more accessible, simplify techniques, and optimise use of resources. The company is developing medical devices and novel embryo testing methodologies that will automate all stages of the IVF process, lowering costs and increasing throughput for IVF practitioners.
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Dianomi, a London-based provider of native digital advertising services, has today listed itself on the AIM market of the London Stock Exchange. Notably, Dianomi is the first UK company to go public under the Business Growth Fund (BGF) portfolio.
The IPO price represents a market capitalisation on the admission of £82 million. In 2018, BGF – the UK & Ireland’s most active growth capital investor – invested £6.3 million in Dianomi.
Founded by Rupert Hodson (CEO), Raphael Queisser (COO), and Cabell de Marcellus (CTO) in 2003, the company enables premium clients to deliver native advertisements to a targeted audience across the desktop and mobile websites and Apps of premium publishers.
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While, the global coronavirus pandemic affected mental health around the world — ICAS World Ltd (ICAS), a leading global provider of mental health and employee wellness services, has acquired the NHS-commissioned mental health tech startup, Hello Tomo. The financial details of the deal remain undisclosed.
The acquisition is the first major milestone for ICAS as it rolls out its new global digital health strategy, tapping into the $121 billion mental wellness market and expanding its support for the 790 million people around the world currently affected by a mental health condition.
Hello Tomo founded in 2016 to help users build and maintain healthy habits to manage depression, anxiety, and overall mental health. The app encourages users to create an anonymous peer support community through photo sharing. It also helps people to form positive associations between their actions and feelings to improve self-management, build resilience and reduce the risk of acute episodes.
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Trade Republic, a leading European online brokerage that offers commission-free trading similar to Robinhood in the United States, said on Thursday it had raised $900 million from investors at a valuation of more than $5 billion.
The funding round at Trade Republic, which was founded six years ago in Berlin and counts over a million customers in Germany, France and Austria, was led by Sequoia, the storied Silicon Valley investor that recently opened a London office.
Co-founder Christian Hecker told Reuters that Trade Republic would invest the proceeds in expanding across the entire euro zone over the next two years, with market launches in Spain and Italy planned next.
"We want to build the bank of the future," Hecker said in an interview.
"We are the only online broker in Europe that has a banking licence and its own technology."
Like Robinhood, which has spawned a new class of U.S. retail investor that has powered the latest bull market in stocks, Trade Republic offers commission-free investment via an easy-to-use smartphone app.
The hype around retail investing has drawn attention to Trade Republic, Hecker said, adding however that its focus was on helping millennials invest over the longer term at a time of negative interest rates and pension shortfalls.
Trade Republic offers free exchange-traded fund savings plans and commission-free investing in shares and cryptocurrencies.
It manages 6 billion euros ($7.3 billion) in assets. Half of its customers have never invested before in their lives before signing up, said fellow co-founder Thomas Pischke.
Sequoia backed Silicon Valley giants Apple and Google and more recently invested in Stripe, the payments company founded by two Irish brothers, and Klarna, the Swedish 'buy now, pay later' fintech that is eyeing a stock market listing.
“The democratization of financial markets will be one of the most important consumer trends of the next decade," Doug Leone, partner at Sequoia, said in a statement.
"Trade Republic is on the leading edge of this trend and has attracted an untapped generation of European savers who demand increased financial accessibility."
Joining the investment round were TCV and Thrive Capital, as well as existing investors Accel, Founders Fund, Creandum and Project A.