Startups

Enate, a fast-growing and pioneering intelligent automation platform, announced it has received a follow-on investment round of £2 million from Mercia, a growth-focused investment firm with experience backing innovative SaaS businesses.

The retail industry has experienced a huge shift in recent years. The power now lies with the customers. Yet, some brands have been slow to understand the gravity of this situation and find themselves falling behind as a result.

Deliverect, a global scale-up that simplifies digital orders for more than 27,000 locations across 40 markets, today announced new global research, which revealed that more people are purchasing takeaway or delivery orders today than they were before the recent increase in cost of living. The survey, which was commissioned by Deliverect and conducted by Censuswide, found that 57.34% of consumers are now purchasing up to three takeaways in a week now, in comparison to 49% prior to the inflation increase.

Swedish-Ukrainian IT company Sigma Software Group is scaling up their Femmegineering initiative to build a female tech community across emerging European tech markets. The organisers will launch educational events, and provide free access to IT courses at Sigma Software University and mentorships by industry leaders to female refugees and local women in Europe.

Acquisitions can be an ideal way for founders to accelerate growth, enhance market share and achieve higher valuations. However, startups considering an acquisition need to think carefully about their objections and plan for all eventualities if they want a merger or acquisition to be a success. 

Sküma Water has raised £300,000 in a pre-seed funding round led by early-stage focused venture capital firm Jenson Funding Partners. Multiple angel investors also participated in the round, including William Ripley, a notable investor in sustainable technology and ex-director of product strategy at Philips

Birmingham not-for-profit hibretOne is hosting an official launch event on Monday 10th October 2022. The free event is a continuation of the company’s efforts to help UK businesses, having already supported entrepreneurs to access £4m worth of grants to date.

EasyTip, the UK’s leading online service for collecting tips in the hospitality industry, is announcing a new partnership with Samtouch Software, bringing fairer and quicker tip payments to staff at over 7,500 hospitality venues across UK. Technological innovation has become vital in driving the post-pandemic recovery of the sector and enabling the administration of staff tips to be more efficient, cheaper, and less time consuming is a significant component of such a trend.

Collctiv, a group payment app that allows friends, families, businesses, charities, and community groups to collect money together, is celebrating a major company milestone after reaching $20 million in processed transactions.

KOOS, an Estonian-based start up, has today announced $4M worth of seed funding led by high profile investors at Plural Platform with participation from investors including LocalGlobe, Tiny.vc and Matt Clifford.

Starting a business comes with unavoidable risk and responsibility. And where there is risk, insurance surely follows. It’s an industry that has a foothold in many aspects of life, from the cars we drive to our homes and our businesses. While it’s another expense to add to the profit and loss sheet, taking out the right kind of insurance for your business is absolutely critical. Even more so for startups because many typically lack financial security and stability in the first few years. In this short guide, we’ll outline the most common types of business insurance that startups take out from the get-go.

Here we are. It’s 2022 and we’re watching the pandemic slowly disappearing in the rear-view mirror. During the pandemic, being locked down in our homes gave us the opportunity to be more creative, have more quality time and do activities with loved ones.

Pets are big business in the UK. According to the PDSA, over half of the UK’s adult population own a pet of some description. This is a lucrative demographic for budding business owners in the pet industry, particularly with regard to ‘pet hospitality’ – an emerging industry borne of the increased mobility of younger pet owners in the UK. But if you were to start your own pet boarding business, where would you begin?

Zeus, the UK-based start-up which is disrupting the freight industry with its next-generation digital platform, has expanded into Europe after signing up the pioneering international fashion retailer, Primark.

Growth is often the number one priority for any startup. With growth comes revenue and with revenue should come profit, eventually. However, growth is all about finding the sweet spot – too much, too quickly and your startup could be left short of resources or without the proper structure in place to support your expansion. Too slow and your business could face stagnation and lose the race to turn profitable. The sweet spot is what’s known as sustainable growth – the rate at which your resources, structure and systems can support growth without risking the quality of your product or service, or operations as a whole. Below we’ll explore some of the areas of your startup that you should be focusing on to help generate sustainable growth.

Looking for a tasty and nutritious meal that you don’t need to cook from scratch? Feast your taste-buds on this new range of macro-balanced, high protein meals and pizzas from The Gym Kitchen.

Some things in life are simple truths: night follows day and people love pizza. This is clearly the case for British taste-buds, as the UK pizza industry market size hit a whopping £3272 million in 2021.

The last decade has seen a huge boom in the global startup ecosystem, with digital and tech startups driving innovation across every industry imaginable. Last year, VC investment in startups hit an all-time high, almost doubling to reach $621 billion globally and shatter historic funding records. In recent years, the UK has created more tech unicorns than any other country except the US and China. Following a turbulent couple of years, post-pandemic investor confidence in startups seemed to have skyrocketed, and it seemed the startup sector was on the path to an unprecedented recovery.

Darren Goode, former President and Global Chief Marketing Officer at Elvie, is taking up a new role as a leading Advisor at femtech startup Béa Fertility. Darren led Elvie to become a global healthtech brand with revenues exceeding $26m. He now joins Béa as the team gears up to bring its hotly anticipated fertility device to market.

On Wednesday 28th September, at 1.00pm, Phil Fraser, the Business Sounding Board, is delivering a free webinar titled ‘How to prepare to sell your Business…before it is even for sale’.