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LONDON (Reuters) - Online pensions provider Pensionbee plans to list on the London Stock Exchange, it said on Tuesday.
The firm has around 130,000 customers and 1.5 billion pounds ($2.08 billion) of assets under administration, it said in a statement.
Pensionbee said it planned an institutional offering and an offer for existing customers, with shares to be admitted to the high growth segment of the London Stock Exchange’s main market.
Keefe, Bruyette & Woods is acting as key adviser and sole global co-ordinator.
($1 = 0.7226 pounds)
Proximie, a London, UK-based health technology platform company focused on digitising operating and diagnostic rooms, closed a $38m Series B equity financing.
The round was led by F-Prime Capital, with participation from new investors Questa Capital, Eight Roads, Maverick Ventures, and existing investors Global Ventures, BECO Capital and Cedar Mundi Ventures.
The company intends to use the funds to expand in the U.S. and European markets growing its commercial efforts, making new technology implementations, and conduct research and development activities.
Founded by Dr. Nadine Hachach-Haram FRCS (Plastics) – (B.E.M., British Empire Medal), in 2016, Proximie provides a platform that combines human expertise with augmented reality (AR), machine learning (ML), artificial intelligence (AI) and advanced telecommunications to build a network of operating rooms, where every interaction is captured, digitised, catalogued, and analysed.
The company has experienced rapid growth over the last 12 months, having conducted over 10,000 surgical interactions in 300 hospitals in over 40 countries.
Lilli is a UK-based SaaS company that uses machine learning to revolutionise home care. The company bagged £4.5 million pre-Series A funding. The 50% oversubscribed round was organised by West Hill Capital.
The company that supports independent living will use the investment to fuel the roll out of machine learning-enabled care solutions. The funding comes eight months into Lilli CEO Gren Paull’s tenure and a slew of senior appointments including former management consultant Kelly Hudson as CSO, and CCO Nick Weston from O2.
Gren Paull, CEO, Lilli, said: “The timing for this new preventative approach to care and integration of our smart technology is crucial in meeting the needs of ageing population, this has only been exacerbated by COVID 19. The role of technology has a vital role to play in the future success of care delivery across the UK and globally.”
Robert Forbes Caie, managing partner West Hill Capital, added: “West Hill is delighted to be supporting Lilli enabling them to bring its pioneering preventative technology to the NHS and social care sector. Lilli’s proprietary technology is empowering people to live independently within their own homes for longer, when in the past, an individual’s age, ability or condition would have required constant supervision or care. West Hill seeks to identify companies harbouring strong IP that are potentially globally scalable and we feel that Lilli certainly exhibits these qualities.”
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Due to the ongoing pandemic, hyperlocal online grocery sales have exploded globally, and the UK is no behind this surging trend. After, Weezy, Dija, Bother and many others, another one has joined the bandwagon, ready to deliver groceries to shopper’s doorsteps in 15 minutes, without minimum orders or substitutions.
Dubbed as Jiffy, the UK-based startup has also raised £2.6 million ($3.6m) in an initial seed-funding round this week. Led by venture capital fund LVL1 Group, the first investment round for the startup was also attended by AddVenture, TA Ventures, Vladimir Kholiaznikov, also angel investors including Oskar Hartmann, Alexander Nevinskiy and Dominique Locher.
What’s unique about Jiffy?
Headed by a team with extensive experience in online and offline retail, including former managers from Sainsbury’s, Deliveroo and Revolut, Jiffy’s first dark store will open in London this month offering a total range of 2,000 SKUs.
Lev Leviev, the founder of LVL1 Group, commented: “Online express grocery delivery is a relatively new concept. It is gaining traction around the world and disrupting traditional neighbourhood convenience store shopping. Executing hyperlocal delivery requires a combination of online e-commerce and sophisticated offline retail and logistics expertise.”
The first areas Jiffy will be available in will include Westminster, Waterloo, Lambeth, Battersea, Clapham Town, Shoreditch, Bethnal Green, Hackney, Whitechapel, Stepney Green.
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We live in a world where merchants still pay to be paid – fees between 2-5%, which are hidden from consumers, but the consumer ultimately picks up the bill.
To alleviate this issue, London fintech Agitate has got an investment of $3.5 million (£2.51 million approx) from pool of high calibre tech-savvy investors. These include Frank Schilling, a highly successful internet entrepreneur who recently sold some of his registry business to GoDaddy and Stuart Lawley. With the latest backing, Agitate is launching its innovative payment solution BOPP, with an aim to bring an end to card fraud, remove friction in digital payments, and slash transaction fees – saving UK businesses over £9bn a year.
The new payment platform from Agitate, the payment and Identity company, combines decentralised Identity, blockchain and open banking. As it uses open banking, there is no need to use payment cards, thereby making the transaction super secure.
In 2019, over £1 billion was lost in card fraud and the card, not present fraud was estimated to have resulted in a staggering £470 million. By generating a payment link from BOPP, this issue will be eliminated. This tech is secure as every bank account that requests payments is verified by BOPP directly from their business bank. The transactions made via this platform are consented to by the payee via biometrics and online bank app security.
To read the full article click here.
PayFit is a French HRtech startup that aims to facilitate complex and time-consuming payroll and HR tasks. The leader in HR and payroll management for SMEs has hit the headlines as it bagged €90 million (nearly £77 million) funding.
This investment comes soon after the 40% growth that follows PayFit achieved back in 2020. The investment round was led by Eurazeo Growth, Large Venture and BPIFrance along with existing investors including Accel, Frst and French billionaire Xavier Niel. PayFit is gearing for a further 80% company growth in 2021.
The latest funds will let PayFit continue developing its comprehensive HR solution, consolidating its existing offer and support to hypergrowth. This is possible as the company intends that to increase its headcount by 50% to 800 and 1,000 by the end of 2022.
As of now, PayFit serves over 5,000 SMEs with 100,000 employees using the solution. These include Revolut, Starling Bank, Treatwell, and others across locations including France, Germany, Spain, Italy and the UK. Already, there are 550 employees in its offices located in Paris, Berlin, Barcelona and London. So, it will hire fresh talent to work at these offices.
Read the full article here.
Squarespace, a NYC-based website building and ecommerce platform, raised approximately $300m in funding at an enterprise valuation of $10 billion.
The round includes new investors Dragoneer, Tiger Global, D1 Capital Partners, Fidelity Management & Research Company, funds and accounts advised by T. Rowe Price Associates, Inc. and Spruce House with participation from existing investors Accel and General Atlantic.
The company intends to use the funds to expand operations and its business reach.
Led by Founder & CEO Anthony Casalena, Squarespace is a website building and ecommerce platform that enables users to build a brand and transact with their customers. Its suite of products enables anyone at any stage of their journey to manage their projects and businesses through websites, domains, ecommerce, marketing tools, scheduling, and with Unfold, tools for managing a social media presence. The company currently has customers in 180+ countries and a team of more than 1,200 across New York City, Dublin, Ireland, Portland, Oregon and Los Angeles, California based offices.
Online investment platform eToro is set to go public via a merger with blank cheque company FinTech Acquisition Corp that will value the business at about $10.4 billion.
The latest high profile fintech Spac deal will see eToro list on Nasdaq and includes commitments for a $650 million common share private placement from a host of blue chop investors.
Founded in 2007 as a "social investment network" with the aim of opening up capital markets to the masses, eToro lets users trade a host of assets, from fractional equities to crypto. Users can trade directly themselves, invest in a smart portfolio, or replicate the strategy of successful investors on the platform.
Like other trading platforms such as Robinhood, the company has seen business boom during the pandemic, adding over five million registered users in 2020 and generating gross revenues of $605 million, up 147% on the previous year.
Yoni Assia, CEO, eToro, says: “We created a new category of wealth management - social investing - and we are dominating the market as evidenced by our rapid expansion.”
SumUp, a London-based startup that helps businesses power revenues through card payments — by way of physical readers, online payments, invoices and other services — is itself powering up in a big way.
Today it announced financing totalling €750 million (around $895 million at today’s rates), money that it will be using to continue expanding its business — specifically, for acquisitions; to launch in new markets in Europe, Latin America and Asia; and to build out the suite of services that it provides to businesses. The company is already active in 33 countries (most recently Chile, Colombia and Romania) and has some 3 million businesses as customers.
The funding is coming from Goldman Sachs, Temasek, Bain Capital Credit, Crestline and funds managed by Oaktree Capital Management. SumUp confirmed that the financing is coming in the form of debt, not equity, so there is no formal valuation of the company to disclose. To date, it’s one of the biggest financings, debt or otherwise, for any startup (that is, any privately-backed tech company) in the region.
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In a recent development, London-based B2B-focused sales and marketing lead generation platform provider, Cognism has raised $12.5 million (nearly £9 million) funding.
The investment round was led by existing investor, AXA Venture Partners along with participation from a new investor, Swisscom Ventures. The other existing investors that took part in the round are Investiere and VentureFounders.
Since founded in 2015, Cognism has grown to become one of the leading B2B data providers in Europe. The introduction of the GDPR in May 2018 provided Cognism with the opportunity to build a leading compliant product.
With this investment, the UK scaleup plans to expand across Europe. Also, it intends to consolidate its position as a leading provider of compliant and intelligent B2B contact data.
James Isilay, CEO of Cognism, said, “This funding round marks the continued recognition of the strength of our team as we are now one of the biggest go-to-market data providers in Europe.
Stefan Kuentz, Partner at Swisscom Ventures, said, “Sales intelligence is crucial for making sellers more productive, even more so when people are working from home. Cognism is well-positioned to become the leading company in Europe and we are excited to be part of that journey.”
Founded by James Isilay, Cognism provides transformative solutions to help revenue teams drive predictable lead generation and improve conversions across all engagements.
Powered by patented AI technology, it provides organisations with compliant B2B data and a suite of sales acceleration tools to help activate it. Cognism enables its global customers to find and deliver new revenue faster.
The company witnessed 60% year-on-year growth in the financial year 2020. The ARR also increased to $11 million from $7 million, and it saw a record-breaking growth. In January 2021, the monthly ARR of the company surpassed $1 million.
Back in May 2020, Cognism acquired Mailtastic, an email signature marketing platform. Its workforce now comprises 200 employees based in seven countries – the U.K., USA, Canada, South Africa, Croatia, Macedonia and Germany.
Cognism’s continued success and revenue growth is testament to the demand from B2B companies for compliant prospecting data. The company’s ongoing commitment to adhering to global regulations is recognised, as it is providing compliant prospecting data to over 1,000 companies worldwide.