YYX Capital heads up NearSt funding round

British startup NearSt, whose technology links products on shop shelves in real-time to nearby customers searching in Google, has landed £2 million in seed funding.

This takes the total raised by the venture to £3.2 million, and brings in cash from angel investors Will Hobhouse (Heal’s, Jack Wills, Whittard of Chelsea) and Ben Laurie (Google Research & Machine Intelligence) alongside senior engineers from AI firm DeepMind.

The round was led by YYX Capital. NearSt will use the cash injection to accelerate uptake by retailers and customers in the UK with a wave of new hires, and launch its offering in the US.

Shops install a piece of software that automatically connects to any type of shop till or inventory management system. Shortly after, they will start seeing their products appear in local search results, sending nearby shoppers in-store who might otherwise have ordered online.

Retailers pay a one-time connection fee of £399 and then NearSt’s core search product is free, with the option of purchasing weekly add-ons to drive additional local visibility. In addition to listing a shop’s products in Google, NearSt also provides detailed insights to the retailer about what’s popular with customers searching nearby.

“Many people presume e-commerce signals the death knell for the high street, but over 90% of all purchases still happen in-store globally. This is a multi-trillion dollar market that technology has barely touched, and NearSt has the potential to truly transform how we all interact with physical retail,” says James Cox, Founding Partner at YYX Capital.

“Google already see the impact live in-store inventory data can have, and we’re just scratching the surface with the potential this can have for other technology companies. NearSt epitomises the type of next generation business that YYX Capital aim to back; those developing genuine innovations that will transform the way we interact with commerce on a daily basis.”