News
Closed Loop Medicine, a Cambridge, and London-based healthtech startup, has raised £2.1M in Pre-Series A funding.
Investment came from Longwall Venture Partners, IQ Capital and Martlet, the investment arm of the Marshall of Cambridge group, as well as Cambridge Angel investors, including well-known serial entrepreneur Sherry Coutu CBE.
Founded in 2017 by Dr Hakim Yadi OBE, CEO, Dr Paul Goldsmith, Dr David Cox and Dr Felicity Sartain, Closed Loop Medicine is a therapeutics company that combines proven drug treatments with digital therapeutics. Digital therapeutics deliver evidence-based therapeutic interventions to patients that are driven by high quality software programs to prevent, manage, or treat a medical disorder or disease. The company’s approach uses data and insights about how a patient is responding to treatment to tailor drug and non-drug therapy.
The funding will enable the company to invest in technical product development, start clinical development and clinical trials as well as invest further in drug development. The funding has also been used to recruit the current management team, as well as support building out the CLM tech team.
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Stitch Fix, an online service combining algorithms and personal stylists to provide curated wardrobes, has made its UK debut.
The company is attempting to grab a share of the lucrative UK fashion ecommerce market and will compete with local businesses such as Thread, Intelistyle and the personal shopping services of powerhouses like Net-A-Porter and Amazon.
In the US, Stitch Fix has grown quickly since the first shipment in 2011. The company has over 3 million users and went public last year, and announced a 26% increase in revenue to $1.2b in the year ended 28 July 2018.
The platform has hired UK stylists and buyers to ensure it has the right brands and products for the launch. The UK version will source from brands including Sweaty Betty, Joules, Rag & Bone, Oasis, Warehouse, Whistles and French Connection - all popular brands amongst UK consumers.
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The Hut Group, a fashion and beauty e-commerce business, has dived deeper into the hospitality sector by acquiring the Eclectic Hotel Group, which comprises two prestigious luxury boutique hotels in Manchester.
The Hut Group said the deal demonstrates its innovative approach to engaging with consumers in both the online and offline environment. The two four-star hotels, King Street Townhouse and Great John Street Hotel, will form part of the firm’s marketing infrastructure, and help deliver enhanced consumer experiences, influencer and brand-led events as well as content creation.
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Alphabet's Google, the largest U.S. digital advertising platform, is facing increased competition from sites where people purchase products and places thought to be safe from potentially offensive content, advertising buyers say.
Alphabet’s shares fell 7.5% on Tuesday, a day after the company reported its slowest quarterly revenue growth in three years. About 85% of the company’s revenue comes from Google’s ad business.
Google’s massive size, which still had revenue of $36.3 billion in the first quarter, means that growth must slow as global digital ad budgets and international economies have also slowed.
Amazon’s ad business, which is combined in an “advertising and other sales” segment, brought in $2.7 billion in the first quarter, less than one-tenth of Google’s ad sales.
Google’s streaming video platform YouTube has also struggled to stop the spread of disturbing or adult content on the site, prompting some major advertisers including AT&T Inc to remove its ads for fear they could appear next to offensive content.
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Revolut surveyed its 18-38 year old customers in the UK and Ireland to reveal their attitudes towards money.
The research has revealed that over two thirds of millennials are regularly saving, with half now enjoy handling their finances. However, two thirds of young consumers are still worried about their financial future.
Over the last few years, various studies have appeared to confirm a troubling pattern – millennials don’t save, they don’t care about their financial futures and they don’t know how much money they need to live on. But the research shows this simply isn’t true.
While older generations have accused millennials of valuing avocado toast and chai lattes above mortgages and pensions, the new data has revealed that the vast majority are regularly saving money. Despite this, almost two thirds (63%) are still worried about their financial future.
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Plum, the world’s first AI-powered personal money management chatbot has attracted financing of $4.5million. This brings total investment in the firm to $6.3 million.
Plum have some pretty impressive figures to talk about: the company achieved 433% user growth in one year, growing from 75,000 to 400,000 users.
Plum will be one of the first UK-based companies to offer both iOS and Messenger, allowing users to choose the most convenient platform for interacting with its money assistant, truly bringing interactions to where the customer is.
Plum will use the funding to expand its staff in both its London and Athens offices, to focus on its multi-platform strategy and to expand into new markets.
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Sainsbury’s is launching the UK's first till-free store at its Holborn Circus branch to allow customers to pay through their phones.
Customers can use the Smartshop app to scan groceries as they go round the store, pay in the app and scan a code before leaving to confirm payment.
The store, which has been chosen as 82% of payments at the London branch are currently cashless, has been refurbished to remove all tills and self-checkouts in a three-month experiment.
The in-app payment technology is available in seven other Central London stores, in Blackfriars, Mansion House, Paternoster Square, Shoreditch, Clapham North, Clapham High Street and Clapham Old Town, however, the Holborn branch is the first to go completely digital.
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Perkbox, Europe’s fastest growing employee experience platform, has raised £13.5M in equity funding to support the worldwide expansion plans for its employee experience platform.
The round is led primarily by existing investor Draper Esprit, alongside long-term Perkbox angels.
This funding will help finance part of the company’s expansion operations in its recently launched markets, including Australia and France. Alongside this, it will also help scale the development and distribution of Perkbox’s new products – Perkbox Medical, Perkbox Insights and the platform’s card-linked PerksGO feature, which were all launched in Q4’2018.
Perkbox had raised a conservative £11M in equity funding so far, making it one of the most capital efficient SaaS businesses operating in Europe.
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Fintech startup Tully has launched to help solve the UK’s consumer debt problem.
The startup is free for consumers and created to improve financial education and make it easier for people to manage their money and repay debts faster.
The start-up’s innovative approach to money management has caught the attention of like-minded industry names such as Nationwide.
Currently, the debt of an average UK household has reached a record £15,400, amounting to a combined total of £482bn across the UK. Thousands of people struggle with debt every year and it is estimated that the accompanying physical and mental health impacts resulting from debt stress, costs UK employers as much as £51 billion per annum. Tully aims to alleviate this.
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In addition to announcing a 48% surge in revenue for the year ended February, British e-tailer revealed on Wednesday that Brian Small is to join its board as an independent non-executive director with immediate effect.
Small was chief financial officer of JD Sports for 15 years until October last year, when he announced his retirement from executive life.
Prior to that, he was operations finance director at healthcare company Intercare and has also been finance director of a number of other companies.
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