News
Depop, the secondhand fashion marketplace for millennials, has revealed ambitions international expansion plans that could see it launch further across Europe and Asia in the near future.
The eight-year-old company recently raised £50 million in a Series C funding round led by General Atlantic. The investment was mainly aimed at accelerating the app’s growth in the US, but a portion of the funds will also be used to expand further across Europe and Asia
Last year, the business posted an impressive 85% increase in sales, and double-digit growth is set to continue this year, according to the group.
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Klarna, a payments provider, continues its bid to increase its UK customer base with the launch of a major ad campaign in partnership with retail brands including Asos, JD and Superdry. With giant posters on London underground platforms, digital screens along tube escalators, and advertising on the sides of buses, the campaign aims to promote the company’s “smooth retail services”.
The Swedish company had over 12m transactions in the UK in the past year, and in August alone, more than 100,000 UK shoppers downloaded its app. The UK is a strong market for the business given the size of the online shopping market and the fast pace of the high street fashion industry.
Further capitalising on the UK fashion economy, Klarna is now partnering with retailers to offer its range of products in store as well as online. Major partners include Mothercare, Thomas Sabo and iSmash.
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Moneyfarm, a Milan and London-based digital wealth management company, raised £36M in Series C funding.
The round was led by Poste Italiane with participation from Allianz Asset Management.
The company intends to use the funds to roll out its wealth management services for investors across Europe.
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Wematch, a fintech firm that provides technology which augments how traders at banks match, negotiate and manage trades, has received investment from J.P. Morgan and Societe Generale.
Wematch delivers the benefits of the newest web technologies to traders at banks, improving the matching and negotiation process, cutting costs for banks and increasing efficiency and reducing conduct risk for traders. The fintech firm now has 40 banks and more than 750 traders using it.
Wematch came through J.P. Morgan’s In-Residence Programme and Societe Generale’s Global Markets Incubator to foster the expansion of the fintech’s offer across asset classes and instruments.
The funding takes J.P. Morgan’s and Societe Generale’s relationship with Wematch from users to investors, with the banks already active on Wematch across all existing platforms.
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Subscription boxes continue to win new fans in the UK and while food delivery is the most popular product category, beauty is in second place with the channel becoming an important one for beauty product sales, especially to young consumers.
Delivery specialist Whistl surveyed 1,000 consumers and found 53% have a food box subscription, with Graze the most popular service. But a hefty 31% of them also have a beauty subscription, and it’s perhaps no surprise that Birchbox is in the lead here, although Glossybox comes in fourth place and Dollar Shave Club is at number nine.
But fashion/clothing has made less of an impact in this channel, and scores only 8% to put it in joint eighth place.
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Amazon.com Inc is due to sign a pledge to meet the goals of the Paris Climate agreement by 2040 and be net carbon neutral, 10 years ahead of schedule, Chief Executive Jeff Bezos has said.
Bezos said Amazon was placing an order to buy 100,000 electric delivery vehicles from Rivian Automotive LLC and to use 100% renewable energy by 2030, up from 40% today. Amazon and Ford Motor Co are among the investors in the EV startup. Amazon will also invest $100 million to restore forests and wetlands.
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Barclays, a transatlantic consumer and wholesale bank, and Anthemis, a global FinTech investor, have partnered to co-launch a New York City-based studio targeting female entrepreneurs to establish sustainable, valuable FinTech businesses.
The Female Innovators Lab is a hands-on program targeting founders at the earliest stages. Barclays and Anthemis will work with female entrepreneurs and their founding teams to shape and execute a vision, from concept development through to business launch and seed investment.
Once established, the startups will move into Barclays’ newly expanded Rise building in New York’s Silicon Alley, where they will have access to mentoring and networking opportunities from the world-class FinTech hub.
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British retail sales unexpectedly fell on the month in August after shoppers bought less online than the month before when major sales promotions encouraged them to splash out, official figures have shown.
Monthly retail sales volumes dipped by 0.2%, the Office for National Statistics said, compared with an average forecast for a flat reading in a Reuters poll of economists and the first fall in three months.
The category of 'non-store retailing' - predominantly online sales dropped by 3.2%, the biggest decline since August 2015 and a month after Amazon held its annual 'Prime Day' promotion which helped boost sales by 7.6% the previous month.
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PayFit, one of the fastest-growing tech companies in Europe, has launched in the UK. The news follows its previous funding round in June which saw the software startup raise $79m from Eurazeo and Bpifrance.
PayFit currently has offices in France, Germany and Spain, and has grown to 300 people. Over the next year, it plans to double its workforce to 600, also opening an Italian office.
The London office located in Shoreditch, currently has 18 staff and predicts to grow to 30 by the end of the year, helping PayFit to roll out as quickly as possible across the UK.
Founded in 2016, PayFit’s software reinvents the HR process, offering an end-to-end, automated service to SMEs across the globe, digitalising everything from payslips and expenses to holidays and RTI submissions.
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Sonovate, the UK-based finance and back-office tech provider to recruitment agencies and consultancies, has secured £110million debt and equity finance, led by M&G Investments, MXB Holdings Inc, Dawn Capital and Rocket Internet SE.
This latest round of investment follows a Series B funding secured in October 2016, led by Global Founders Capital, the investment vehicle of Rocket Internet, and supported by Dawn Capital. Dawn also led Sonovate’s Series A funding round earlier that year.
Launched to challenge traditional invoice finance products on offer from the banks, Sonovate helps any business working with contingent workers to unlock their true growth potential.
As traditional lending has become increasingly lengthy and uncertain for SMEs since the 2008 financial crisis, Sonovate reduces this complexity and provides upfront funding against unpaid invoices. The company has funded almost £1 billion of invoices for recruitment agencies, consultancies and on-demand vendors since launching in 2012.
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