Hopin raises £32.4M Series A to scale its platform
Founded in 2019 in London by CEO Johnny Boufarhat, Hopin's latest investment was led by IVP, Salesforce Ventures, Accel, Northzone, Seedcamp and Slack Fund. The company will use this funding to scale its platform, where a million users have already attended events hosted by over 16,000 organisations.
Hopin's live online events platform helps attendees learn, interact, and connect with people from anywhere in the world. Users can create events that are interactive and personal whether they are hosting a live training workshop, bringing a company’s remote team together, or launching a full-scale digital conference. Currently, the company is producing events for the United Nations, The Wall Street Journal, NBC Universal, Adobe, GitLab, Culinary Institute of America, TNW, and hundreds more.
Greentech Carbon Clean Solutions raises £17.5M
Based in London, Carbon Clean Solutions Limited (CCSL), a tech maker separating low-cost carbon dioxide (CO2) received this new equity investment of £17.5M in a Series B funding round led by Equinor Ventures (EV), ICOS Capital (ICOS), WAVE Equity Partners, Chevron Technology Ventures, and Marubeni Corporation.
The company will grow the team and deliver its proven technology for carbon capture, utilisation and storage (CCUS) projects across the steel, cement, waste management and refining & petrochemicals sectors. CCSL will also continue to invest in the production of their “containerised” solution.
Crypto challenger Ziglu receives £5.25M seed funding
Several specialist UK fintech investors and entrepreneurs participated in the round. Founded by Mark Hipperson and part of the London Fintech community, Ziglu has joined the summer cohort of the 2020 Business Growth Programme, sponsored by the Mayor of London. Ziglu aims to provide its customers with a much smarter, more accessible and fair way to access crypto and foreign currencies.
With the investment, the startup will focus on delivering the ambitious product roadmap, building and engaging with its user community, and continuing to expand its tech team and capabilities.
Scaleup-focused HR platform Tempo raises £5M
With offices in Manchester and London, Tempo recruitment platform is backed by the Adecco Group. In total, the company raised over £8M since its launch in 2017 and will use this new investment to enhance its platform, accelerate its expansion and hire new people in 2020.
Co-founded by Ben Chatfield, Tempo provides a recruitment platform for scaleup companies including Monzo, Starling Bank and Bulb. Its platform uses technology to ease the recruitment process, with machine learning used to match job seekers to potential employers and video interviews used for screening.
Avatar designer TEOOH raises £3.65M to enhance its platform and engagement
Developed in London amid the pandemic, Teooh, a provider of an avatar-based virtual platform was backed by Spark Capital and General Catalyst. This investment will help the company to accelerate its platform development, and create additional virtual venues for users to meet in, and increase its team.
Teooh enables users to consistently connect its community without borders or boundaries. Its virtual venues let anyone from multinational corporations to small groups of friends design personalised avatars and share common spaces to meet, present, exchange ideas and foster meaningful relationships. Anyone with a mobile device can open their own venue with no VR headset required.
Mental health tech Beckley Psytech raises £3M Series A
Investors in the round include British businessmen Jim Mellon and Richard Reed, co-founder of Innocent Drinks. Co-founded by Lady Amanda Feilding and CEO Cosmo Feilding Mellen, the executive team also includes Marc Wayne as Chairman of Board and Dr Steve Wooding, Chief Scientific Officer.
With this investment, Beckley Psytech aims to develop a pipeline of psychedelic drugs into licensed pharmaceutical medicines for treating psychiatric and neurological diseases.
Hospitality software provider BookingTek raised £2M
With Matthew Stubbs as its Founder & CEO, BookingTek provides TableRes, a new smartphone application which allows guests to order and pay at the table in restaurants without interaction with staff.
The app is being provided free-of-charge to medium and large restaurant chains to help manage social distancing by eliminating face to face contact and enabling end to end contactless guest journeys. The app can also be used in hotels and wherever food and drink are served.
Digital rental platform Canopy raises £2M seed funding
Founded by Tahir Farooqui, Canopy aims to improve the financial lives of millions of rental households by providing access on its platform to dynamic financial products, supported by Experian and Open Banking data.
Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, Canopy exceeded its funding target and was oversubscribed within 48 hours of opening the investment round led by West Hill Capital. The company will use this investment to accelerate its position as a leading digital platform for tenants.
Investors and startups marketplace Envestors raises £2M in funding
Envestors' latest funding round was led by SidebySide EIS Fund. With Oliver Woolley as its CEO, Envestors provides a connected marketplace for the UK’s early-stage investment market. The marketplace, powered by its white-label investment platform Envestry, facilitates the investment process for all parties, making it easier for startups to raise investment and for investors to build diverse portfolios.
With the investment, the company intends to grow its network of partners - accelerators, incubators, universities, angel networks and larger enterprise clients -, enhance the platform, and develop its investment services to help startups increase their chances of raising capital.
Marine biotech Jellagen raises £1.9M to develop collagen medical products
With this private investment, Jellagen, leader in advanced collagen biomaterials from marine sources, will develop products for tissue reconstruction, diabetic wound care management and rare skin applications. Collagen is the most abundant protein in the human body and is critical for healthy cell function and healing. It's known for providing a key structural component for bones, muscles, skin, and tendons.
In the medical field, collagen is used in a range of procedures including tissue reconstruction and wound management. Scientists use collagen in routine cell culture applications as it provides a natural scaffold for cells to grow under conditions like those found within the human body.
Smart tech provider ThingTrax closes £811.6K seed round
Established in 2015 and co-founded by Aman Gupta, the company's latest investment was led by SuperSeed and Sumaria. ThingTrax have developed a platform to help manufacturers worldwide to connect their factories with smart tech. Thanks to cloud computing, IoT, AI, and most recently computer vision, to connect machines, workers, and robotics, manufacturers can improve their overall factory's work efficiency.
Currently, the company is working with global factories across plastics, automotive, FMCG, medical, and packaging, and this investment will be injected to further growth and hiring for tech and sales positions.
Other news from the financial world…
Innvotec launches its Female Ventures Fund to support women entrepreneurs
Innvotec also aims to encourage more women to invest in startups and early-stage businesses. Less than 1% of VC investment goes to all-female founded enterprises. The FVF aims to tackle this funding gap by focussing on carefully selected, early-stage businesses founded and co-founded by women.
London-based Connect Ventures closes its Third Fund at $80M
With this fund, VC Connect Ventures will invest in seed-stage tech startups. Backers included Top Tier Capital Partners, Isomer Capital, British Patient Capital, De Agostini, Big Society Capital, Draper Esprit and Korelya Capital. Connect aims to encourage purpose-led founders obsessed with solving hard problems at scale by creating products and companies that people love.
GP Bullhound closes a €125M fund to invest in great entrepreneurs
This continues the VC's prior funds’ successful strategy of investing in the best technology entrepreneurs, with a focus on growth-stage businesses in the software industry.
“We are passionate about supporting great entrepreneurs and it is timely to have been trusted with fresh capital as we are starting to come out of COVID-19" - Per Roman, Co-Founder and Head of Asset Management at GP Bullhound
Kennet Partners launches its fifth fund Kennet V with $250M
The fund exceeded its target and secured new investors from across Europe and Asia. Kennet V has already started to deploy the capital into new investments in B2B SaaS companies. The Fund has made investments in four companies in the UK, Europe and the US and has a strong pipeline for further investments. Kennet specialises in investing in established, high growth technology companies which are founder-owned and ‘bootstrapped’ – built without significant external capital.
