News
Starling, the digital bank, is working with the Post Office to provide its banking services on the high street.
Customers will be able to use post offices to both deposit and withdraw money in their Starling accounts.
The move will provide its personal customers with more choice on how they choose to bank and will also benefit its business customers, such as retail businesses, that deal mostly in cash.
Starling's main banking is still focused within the digital sphere, but this partnership with the Post Office has come about as a response to customers request for more options on how they bank.
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Anine Bing, the US luxury womenswear company, has decided to open its first UK store after closing a $15 million Series A funding round earlier this year.
The company was started in 2012 by Danish model Anine Bing and her husband Nicolai Nielson, and has stores in New York, Los Angeles, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid and Berlin, as well as over 300 stockists worldwide.
The shop will be based in Mayfair, London, an area popular with many other luxury brands such as Agent Provocateur, Mulberry, Breitling, Phillip Plein, Jigsaw and Smythson.
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Monzo, the UK challenger bank, has managed to raise £85m in Series E funding at a £1bn valuation, enabling it to reach unicorn status.
The startup was founded in February 2015 and has grown its customer base to over 1 million users.
The company currently hires 450 people and is looking to double this number over the next year.
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Amazon has launched its try-on-first Prime Wardrobe service in the UK, four months after rolling out in the US market and a week after introducing it in Japan.
Prime has developed from its early days of offering free/next day delivery to a wide range of benefits, the newest addition being the possibility to trial clothes before deciding whether to buy them or not. Which Amazon is hoping will lead to both larger orders and more satisfied customers.
The concept involves customers being able to purchase between 3 to 8 items of clothing and having a week to decide whether they intend to keep them or not. It is only at this point that the customer is charged for the items they haven't returned.
Current retailers that are involved include Calvin Klein, Puma, Lacoste, Levi’s Ted Baker, New Look and LK Bennett.
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Debenhams, a British multinational department store chain, has revealed that it is closing up to 50 of its underperforming stores in the next three to five years, a move that will put around 4,000 jobs at risk.
Already this year, Debenhams has issued three profit warnings and written off £512.4m on leases and goodwill, leading to a loss of £491.5m, the biggest in its 240-year history.
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GoEuro, a platform that allows users to compare all possible travel routes and book a ticket, has just completed a new $150m funding round with Kinnevik and Temasek, with Hillhouse Capital also participating. This brings the total raised by the startup to $300m.
GoEuro has 27 million monthly users and operates in 36 European countries comparing travel prices across flights, trains and buses, making it the leading multi-modal transport booking platform in Europe. It also makes direct sales on its platform for 80% of its transport providers.
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Memory, a Norwegian startup and maker of time tracking app Timely, has raised $5 million in funding. The round was led by Concentric and Investinor, and included investment from existing investor SNÖ Ventures.
Timely, is a fully automatic time tracking tool that is powered by AI. It automatically records everything employees work on and then creates an accurate time sheet.Timely is currently used by more than 4,000 paying businesses across 160 countries.
Memory will use the new funding to double its current 30-person team. It also plans on refining Timely’s AI model and to accelerate international growth.
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Vonage, originally a VoIP pioneer that now offers cloud-based unified communications and other IP services in the business market, has announced that it is going to acquire NewVoiceMedia, a UK company that builds cloud-based contact centre solutions, for $350 million.
The acquisition will help Vonage to expand its reach via its platform so it can integrate with software providers such as Salesforce, as well as increase the service it offers and thereby improve its margins.
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Oxford VR, a health-focused startup spinout from the University of Oxford, has managed to raise £3.2m in investment from investors including Oxford Sciences Innovation, University of Oxford, Force Over Mass, RT Capital and GT Healthcare Capital Partners.
Oxford VR launched their first product this year, an automated VR treatment to help people with acrophobia, and ran a large, randomised test which was so successful it is now being used in select NHS clinics.
They will use the funding to grow and bring automated immersive, clinically validated VR technologies to market.
Oxford VR is hoping to help millions of people with their VR technology that is more accessible, faster, cheaper and effective than traditional treatments.
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Uber Technologies Inc is, according to Bloomberg, in early talks to buy UK tech company Deliveroo for several billion dollars
Deliveroo, the food delivery company, was co-founded by Will Shu and Greg Orlowski in 2012. Since then it has raised over $850m and was last valued at more than $2bn. As such a successful offer would have to be higher than this valuation. Albeit Uber have stated that they want to place a bigger focus on the food delivery section of the company going forwards.
If the sale does go ahead, it would represent a huge attempt by the US company to try and dominate the on-demand food delivery space in Europe.
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