The retail technology year in review: September

RTIH takes a look back at September and rounds up the winners and losers.

Winners

Splio closed a €10 million funding round led by Ring Capital and also including Swen Capital Partners and existing investors, BPI France and Amundi PEF.

Support for Bitcoin payments was set to be launched at 25,000+ sales points across 30 French retailers, including Decathlon and Sephora.

Blockchain platform startup Everledger closed a $20 million Series A funding round. This was led by Tencent Holdings, with Graphene Ventures, Bloomberg Beta, Rakuten, Fidelity and Vickers Venture Partners also participating.

UK-based AI-powered customer marketing startup, Ometria, raised $21 million in a Series B funding round led by Octopus Ventures and also including existing investors Sonae IM, Summit Action, Samos and Adjuvo.

Lookiero closed a $19 million funding round led by MMC Ventures and also including existing investor All Iron Ventures, and new investors Bonsai Partners, 10x and Santander Smart.

Lidl gained 618,000 new shoppers in the past year. According to research from Kantar, it saw its sales rise by 9.2% to £1.6 billion in the 12 weeks to 8th September compared to a year earlier. About 6% of all sales in UK supermarkets are now at the retailer. Rival discounter Aldi also saw its market share increase rapidly, up 6.3% over the same period.

Mobile self-checkout startup MishiPay completed a Series A funding round of £3.5 million, involving American Express Ventures, Nauta Capital and United Ventures.

Darkstore, a fulfilment solution enabling e-commerce companies to offer same-day delivery, announced a $21 million Series B round led by EQT Ventures. This came less than one year after Darkstore closed a $7.5 million Series A round. It has thus far pulled in more than $30 million in funding

Global online retail sales will exceed $6 trillion in physical and digital goods by 2024, according to Juniper Research.

Beekeeper closed a $45 million Series B funding round.

Trigo Vision, a computer vision startup providing checkout-free systems to grocery retailers, raised $22 million in a Series A round.

Simbe Robotics landed $26 million in a Series A equity funding round led by Venrock, with participation from Future Shape, Valo Ventures, and Activant Capital.

Smart grocery cart startup Caper closed a $10 million Series A led by Lux Capital. The round also saw participation from First Round Capital, Y Combinator, Hardware Club, FundersClub, Sidekick Fund and Red Apple Group.

Akeneo, a US-based SaaS venture that provides product information management solutions for omnichannel retailers and brands, raised $46 million in a funding round led by Summit Partners.

Syte, an Israeli artificial intelligence tech startup that powers visual search for the likes of M&S and boohoo, raised $21.5 million in a Series B round led by Viola Ventures.

London-based FinTech Curve became the fastest startup to reach £4 million on Crowdcube following the launch of its crowdfunding campaign - reaching that figure in 42 minutes.

The UK’s gift card and voucher market grew by 7.2% year-on-year, according to research from the UK Gift Card & Voucher Association and KPMG UK.

US startup Swiftly exited stealth mode and announced $15.6 million in seed funding.

Losers

Hackers gained access to a large TV screen at an Asics store in Auckland, New Zealand and put porn on it.

Marks and Spencer was relegated from the FTSE 100 index of Britain's biggest listed companies on Wednesday, 4th September. It was the first time the retailer had not been a FTSE 100 member since the index was launched in 1984

Sir Philip Green's Topshop retailing empire plunged to loss last year, due to a "dramatically" changed retail landscape and increased competition.

John Lewis fell to a half-year loss and said a no-deal Brexit would have a "significant" impact.

Boots was accused of racism after a customer complained about in-store security tags.

Ocado sued one of its founders, Jonathan Faiman.

Fashion rental service Rent the Runway was forced to refund and apologise to disgruntled customers following a botched warehouse management system roll-out.

Also in September…

Consumer knowledge about digital currencies is limited and cash is still king, according to research from ING.

Waitrose parted ways with AI platform venture Today Development Partners, just four months into a deal that was supposed to help treble the size of its online business over the next three years.

Sainsbury's ended its ‘no cash, no cards’ mobile self-checkout store experiment at Holborn Circus Local in London, admitting that some of its customers were not big fans.

PayPal was taking a cautious approach to Facebook’s planned stablecoin Libra, according to a report by Agence France Press (AFP).