News
Oval Money, a UK savings app, has manged to raise £1.3m – with the majority of money coming from crowdfunding via the Crowdcube platform.
The company, which was founded in 2016, will use the funds to help launch a feature within the platform for people to invest their money in its multi-sided marketplace for savings and investments products.
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Instabridge, a Wifi sharing community and mobile app, has managed to raise $3m in funding. The round was led by Luminar Ventures with participation from previous backers Balderton Capital, Draper Associates, Moor and Creandum.
The Swedish company, which was founded in 2012, will use the money to expand in Asia, focusing primarily on India.
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Chargifi, a wireless charging company, has managed to raise £5m. The investment was led by Accelerated Digital Ventures, with other investors including Hewlett Packard Enterprise and firstminute capital.
The company, which has its headquarters in London, will use the funds to expand its growth in the US and Asia.
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Beautystack, an app that helps beauty professionals connect with customers via images of the finished treatment, has raised $1m in Seed funding from early angel investors including LocalGlobe, Mark Sebba, David Rowan and Julien Codorniou.
The company - founded by Sharmadean Reid (founder of WAH Nails), Dan Woodbury and Ken Lalobo - will use the funds to continue developing the platform and launch a mobile app this summer.
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Streetbees, a global intelligence platform with over 1 million users, has managed to raise $12m in Series A Funding. The round was led by Atomico along with other investors including LocalGlobe, Octopus and BGF Ventures.
The funds will allow the London-based company to further advance its core machine learning technology, to expand its data science team, develop its global community networks and grow in the US - where it opened an office in January 2018.
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A survey led by Forrester Research has discovered that online shopping may be slowing on mobile devices but that it's never been more important for retailers to implement click-and-collect capabilities.
The survey also suggests that retailers should embrace omnichannel services in order to stay up to date with new consumer shopping trends.
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International investment in Latin America has more than doubled since 2013 - 25 new investors entered the region in 2017 - with China and Silicon Valley leading the way. Mexico and Brazil are two of the top three markets for Google and Facebook in terms of monthly users and Latin America is a top growth market for companies like Spotify and Netflix.
Although Europe has been the main trade and economic partner for the UK, now might be the perfect time for Britain to expand its horizons and strengthen its global partnerships. In fact Britain’s trade with Latin America in the last decade has been growing much faster than its trade with the EU.
Now is the perfect time for Britain to make the most of the boom in the tech industry in Latin America, especially as their tech focus is very similar to Europe - AI, FinTech as well as ride-sharing apps. The potential for new collaborations is a very exciting prospect for any industry wanting to maximise its global reach, particularly with the growth Latin America's tech sector is currently experiencing.
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Marcus Schenck, one of the most senior executives at Deutsche Bank, believes that bank accounts as we know them now could disappear in as little as five years.
This view follows a recent trip Marcus Schenck made to China where he saw that the retail banking sector is ripe for disruption from new technologies, in particular from seeing a factory producing microchips that can mine bitcoin or any type of blockchain technology.
He believes that in the future traditional accounts held with banks could be closed and replaced by online wallets for holding cryptocurrencies, which would remove the need for banks to store money for individuals.
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Blockchain Capital, a venture capital company, has raised $150m to invest in companies operating in the crypto space.
The company was launched in 2013 and has since managed to increase its assets under management to $250m, with the latest fund being the biggest yet and named Blockchain Capital IV.
They have so far invested in over 70 companies including Coinbase, Ripple, Circle, Ethereum and Kraken - all well-known in the crypto sector.
Blockchain Capital IV will be a multi-stage fund that invests in both equity and crypto assets.
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ClearScore, a credit data startup, is in the process of being acquired by Experian for £275m.
The company, which was founded in 2015, is credited with being the first company in the UK to offer free credit reports.
The deal will allow ClearScore to grow faster and develop exciting new innovations and for Experian to increase the services it offers to its customers.
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