Five retail technology funding rounds you need to know about
RTIH rounds up the retail systems ventures who have been making waves with major investments, including Banked, Swappie and RELEX Solutions.
1. Banked
Banked, a startup that enables consumers to pay from their mobile banking apps, has completed a $20 million Series A funding round.
This was led by Bank of America and Edenred Capital Partners. Existing investors Acrew, Force Over Mass, Firestartr, OM2, Love Ventures Kuvi Capital and Paul Forster (founder of Indeed.com) also participated.
New investors included Sidekick Partners, 9Yards and Huey Lin (ex-PayPal). The round brings the total investment raised to date to over $30 million.
2. Netacea
Netacea, a UK-based bot detection and mitigation specialist, has secured $12 million in Series A funding.
As well as long-term backer Mercia Asset Management, investors included: Rupert Cook, Chairman, Netacea; Gerhard Watzinger, Chairman, Crowdstrike; Marcin Kleczynski, CEO, Malwarebytes; Alex Eckelberry; NED, Malwarebytes and former Non-Executive Director, KnowBe4; and John Viega, former CEO, Capsule8.
Netacea says that it currently works with three out of ten of the world’s largest retail sites.
The funding will enable continued expansion in the UK and the US.
3. RELEX Solutions
RELEX Solutions has announced a €500 million funding round led by funds managed by Blackstone Growth, Blackstone’s growth equity investing business.
This puts its valuation at €5 billion valuation
The company, which previously raised over €200 million, is set to hire hundreds of developers and experts to grow its technical team that currently stands at over 400 people.
Headquartered in Helsinki, Finland, RELEX Solutions employs over 1,300 people globally and has offices in the US, UK, Germany, Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Poland, Singapore, Australia, and Hong Kong.
Clients include Dollar Tree, M&S Food, Franprix, Morrisons, PetSmart, Sephora, and Rossmann.
4. Veho
Logistics tech company Veho has announced a $170 million Series B raise led by Tiger Global with participation from SoftBank Vision, at a $1.5+ billion valuation.
This closely follows the firm closing an oversubscribed Series A round at a $1 billion valuation, bringing it to $300 million of capital raised to date.
From a network of company operated warehouses, Veho facilitates next-day delivery for e-commerce brands.
Its technology powers a platform that matches demand for deliveries with crowdsourced drivers. These drivers collect packages from its warehouses and get them to consumers.
Veho is looking to grow its headcount from nearly 500 employees today to 2,000 by end of 2022, including hiring more than 150 additional software engineers, and also evaluate opportunities for strategic acquisitions.
5. Swappie
Swappie, a Finland-based online destination for buying and selling refurbished smartphones, has wrapped a $124 million Series C funding round.
This was led by Verdane, alongside existing investors Lifeline Ventures, Inventure, Reaktor Ventures and TESI.
With the goal of becoming the leading European player in the refurbished smartphone sector, Swappie will focus on scaling operations in its existing 15 markets across the continent, notably in Italy and Germany.
Janne Holmia, Partner at Verdane, says: “As people and companies progressively move towards a more sustainable lifestyle, the iPhone refurbishment and re-commerce space has grown considerably, and with it Swappie, which has demonstrated the potential to become Europe’s market leader in refurbished smartphones.”
“We’re excited to be working alongside Swappie as we deploy our expertise in building sustainable digital consumer businesses to support a vision of a more resource efficient future for the European consumer.”
