From startups to scaleups: eight retail technology funding rounds you need to know about
RTIH rounds up the retail systems ventures who have recently wrapped notable funding rounds, including The Edit LDN, HyperFinity, Oxbotica, Beontag, and Locad.
1. Oxbotica
Oxbotica, a specialist in autonomous vehicle software, has raised $140 million in Series C investment.
The round includes financial and strategic partners from North America, EMEA and APAC, including new investors such as Aioi Nissay Dowa Insurance Co. and ENEOS Innovation Partners.
Current shareholders who are re-investing include bp ventures, BGF, Halma, Hostplus, Kiko Ventures (IP Group), Ocado Group, Tencent, Venture Science and ZF, amongst other global companies.
Oxbotica has raised approximately $225 million to date.
The latest funding will drive its geographical expansion in North America, EMEA and APAC, and accelerate the deployment of its autonomy operating system in domains where there is both urgent need and potential to scale, such as agriculture, airports, energy, goods delivery, mining and shared passenger transportation.
2. Crurated
Crurated, a member based wine community, is basking in the glow of a $7.2 million funding round from an unnamed group of private investors.
All of the wines that move through the firm’s distribution system are authenticated via NFTs and recorded on the blockchain.
The money will be used to further evolve its technology platform, expand producer partnerships beyond France and Italy, and increase overall market share across the globe.
“The past year has been both innovative and successful for our entire team and the producers we’ve partnered with,” says Alfonso de Gaetano, Founder, Crurated.
“In addition to becoming the first wine community to offer fractional barrel sales backed by NFT technology, we signed an exclusive distribution deal with Charles Lachaux, grew our roster of producers to more than 60, and have attracted a younger demographic of oenophiles onto the platform.”
3. Tredence
4. Locad
Logistics specialist Locad has announced an $11 million Series A funding round to expand its platform that allows consumer brands in Asia-Pacific to automatically store, pack, ship and track their orders in a distributed, end-to-end supply chain as-a-service.
The round was led by Reefknot Investments, a fund anchored by Temasek and Kuehne & Nagel.
Locad’s platform syncs inventory across sales channels such as Shopify, Lazada, Shopee, and TikTok Shop, and orchestrates end-to-end order fulfilment for B2C and B2B orders, from storage to delivery, through a network of warehouses and shipping partners.
To date, it has served over 200 brands, including Havaianas, Reckitt Benckiser, and Emma Sleep, across Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Hong Kong, and Australia.
It lays claim to shipping more than two million orders while maintaining a 99% same-day order fulfilment rate.
5. The Edit LDN
Sneaker and clothing marketplace The Edit LDN has secured a $4.8 million in seed as it scales into the US and MENA region following its launch two years ago.
The round was led by Regah Ventures (early investors to Uber, Coinbase and Instacart) with participation from sports celebrities including New York Giants Captain Xavier McKinney, NBA superstar PJ Tucker and Premier League football player Jesse Lingard.
The Edit LDN was founded in January 2020 by Moses Rashid in his spare bedroom.
It says that it built its proprietary technology facilitating “a global marketplace with a focus on speed, efficiency and experience”.
The venture offers the ability for a same day service, through to storage facilities for resellers, as well as a seller service through its personal shopping team.
6. HyperFinity
HyperFinity, a UK-based decision intelligence startup, has bagged an undisclosed seed investment from Snowflake Ventures, the venture capital arm of data cloud company Snowflake.
HyperFinity, powered by Snowflake, enables retailers and CPGs to better understand customer behaviour and needs, with clients including Costa, Asda, Card Factory, and Hotel Chocolat.
The investment comes after HyperFinity reached the finale of the 2022 Snowflake Startup Challenge, recognising it as one of the top three tech startups globally that is building software on Snowflake’s data platform.
7. Faibrics
Faibrics, which has developed a technology platform that converts CO2 emissions into high value polyester fibers, has raised €17 million from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research & Innovation Program and €5 million from Partners to the Technology Upscaling Project.
The cash will be used to upscale Fairbrics’ technology, first in a pilot line of 100 kg/day by 2024 and later, by 2026, in a 1 ton/day demo plant.
The venture has secured partnerships with fashion brands such as H&M, On-Running and Aigle.
“By using CO2 emissions instead of fossil resources to manufacture polyester, Fairbrics addresses one of the greatest global challenge, climate change caused greenhouse gas (GHG) emission,” says Benoît Illy, Cofounder and CEO at Fairbrics.
“This funding comes as a strong recognition of the work we have accomplished so far, the quality of the consortium we brought together, and the extraordinary potential of our technology to provide highly polluting industries like textile with an alternate environment friendly and economically viable solution.”
8. Beontag
Beontag, a manufacturer of self-adhesives and smart tags, has closed a debt raise of €120 million.
This was secured via Tags Lux Sarl., a wholly owned subsidiary, and through a syndicate of banks led by Deutsche Bank, in support of its international growth.
Beontag, which lays claim to being the second largest provider of digital RFID and NFC solutions for some of the world’s biggest fashion and consumer brands, says it expects to achieve €550 million in revenue for 2022, with international and national acquisitions, integrations and expansion contributing to top-line growth from pro forma actualised revenues of more than €400 million in 2021.
This is the first significant, international capital raise by the Brazilian founded company, with operations now spanning more than 15 international facilities and a presence in over 40 countries.
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