Taylor & Hart raises £3.5M to bring ethically sourced engagement rings to the world
Taylor & Hart, the digital-first bespoke jewellery business, has raised £3.5M in funding from Virgin Money, Active Partners and private investment platform Seedrs.
Consumer demands on the jewellery industry, and particularly engagement rings, have shifted in recent years from price-driven, commoditised rings to unique or branded designer jewellery. Alongside this desire for personalisation, consumers are increasingly purchasing jewellery digitally, with online demand growing at 15% CAGR, and millennial and Gen-Z buyers have the drive to shop consciously.
Taylor & Hart is uniquely placed to serve conscious and digitally savvy consumers with its transparent, digital-first, collaborative design process which allows customers to create a bespoke engagement ring in a more sustainable way. As one of the first jewellery companies globally to use blockchain to enable customers to track every step of the diamond’s journey, Taylor & Hart creates an unchangeable record for each precious stone. This increases the visibility of the diamond’s provenance and accelerates transparency. The brand has also seen a rapid increase in lab-grown diamond purchases, with demand growing over 200% year on year.
The investment will be used to support Taylor & Hart’s intentions to further develop its state-of-the-art technology offering which ensures the authenticity of its gemstones and enables a seamless customer experience, as well as grow internationally and increase brand awareness.
Legal SaaS tool raises £3.5M
Nasdaq Ventures completed a £3.5M Series A investment into Kuberno – a global legal entity SaaS provider for corporate secretaries, legal teams and governance professionals that is already used by household names within the FTSE 100.
Kuberno uses technology to simplify the management of legal entity governance through its cloud-native product Kube, which automates administrative tasks, creates data insights & reports and performs e-filings and form creation amongst other functions. Since it was launched in 2021, Kuberno has grown quickly, recently announcing an integration with Insidertrack, an insider list management solution developed by Cytec that’s used by almost half of the FTSE 100.
Zoe Bucknell, CEO and co-founder of Kuberno. “Our collaboration with Nasdaq Ventures enables us to launch Kube into the global market, building on the strong, sustainable foundations we have laid over the last three years. Now more than ever, we are witnessing a greater emphasis on governance at the board and investor level as well as an increased appetite for governance tech. I look forward to working closely with the Nasdaq Governance Solutions team to help our customers reach the gold-standard in governance.”
Challenger home energy brand Hometree raises £36.7M and acquires green home improvement platform
Hometree Group, a challenger brand in home energy services, has closed a £36.7M oversubscribed Series B investment round, which was led by Legal & General Capital and specialised energy & sustainability investors 2150 & Energy Impact Partners.
Hometree, now one of the largest challengers to British Gas and HomeServe in the UK home cover market, is primarily focused on helping customers protect their essential energy assets in the home from breaking down. To complement this service, Founder and CEO, Simon Phelan’s vision is centred on creating a brighter - and more sustainable - future for homeowners, introducing a services model that includes installation, financing and maintenance of renewable energy solutions in the home.
Simon Phelan, CEO of Hometree, said: “This funding round and acquisition of BeWarm marks a significant new chapter for Hometree, enabling us to deliver on our long-held vision of building the leading residential energy efficiency platform across Europe. The recent energy crisis has shown that we can’t remain reliant on foreign gas to heat and power our homes, and Hometree has a key role to play in helping homeowners transition to a more safe, stable and affordable energy system.”
Neuro-inclusion solutions leader Cognassist raises £4M
Leading education and neuro-inclusion solutions provider Cognassist has raised £4M from Gresham House Ventures.
Cognassist provides a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) platform focused on identifying and supporting individuals with hidden learning needs, underpinned by scientific research and a cognitive dataset. Cognassist was founded in 2019 by successful repeat entrepreneur Chris Quickfall and has already scaled its underlying business within the education market, providing greater social mobility to learners and helping diverse minds to thrive. Quickfall, a thought leader in the space, is supported by Leigh Carlin as COO and Matt McMillan as CFO as the executive management team.
The investment will empower Cognassist to continue its growth within the education market and penetrate the enterprise market, where demand for neuro-inclusive solutions to adequately support employees is rapidly emerging.
Nolea health secures £1M to expand its mental healthcare jobs marketplace
Nolea Health, a healthcare jobs marketplace platform, has raised £1M in Seed funding. This financing round marks the company's formal public launch after 12 months in stealth. The round was led by Frontline Ventures, with participation from Calm/Storm Ventures and others.
Nolea Health is a jobs marketplace that matches mental healthcare clinicians with the right vacant jobs across different healthcare organisations and health systems. The platform's matching algorithm utilises the clinician's profile data, such as experience, education and work preferences, with employers’ job requirements, location, and work culture, to increase the likelihood of successful matches and hires for short-term work opportunities. Once matched, the company hires the clinician to deliver short-term remote-based and in-person mental healthcare.
With the recent funding, Nolea Health plans to expand its team and further develop its machine learning-based technology, doubling down on improving its clinical job-matching capabilities.
