Featuring DREST, DePoly, and Dexory: Six retail technology funding rounds you need to know about
RTIH rounds up six retail systems ventures who have recently secured significant investments in their businesses, including Cart.com, Upp., and Utu.
1. DREST
London-based DREST, a luxury fashion, beauty, lifestyle and metaverse gaming firm, has raised £15 million of funding to continue the development of its new product proposition, DREST Game 2.0.
Launched in 2019 by Lucy Yeomans, the former Editor-in-Chief of Porter, Net-A-Porter.com and Harper’s Bazaar UK, DREST has raised £30 million in total to date, and works with over 260 brands including Breitling, Cartier, Christian Louboutin, Fendi, Gucci, Prada and Valentino.
It merges the worlds of luxury fashion, beauty and lifestyle with the metaverse, offering players the chance to exhibit and improve their styling talent using hyper-realistic avatars.
Through its in-game challenges, it is a platform for user-generated content, with the digital fashion assortment provided by Farfetch as well as brands directly, allowing players to discover, style and shop the latest collections.
2. DePoly
DePoly has closed a $13.8 million seed funding round co-led by BASF Venture Capital and Wingman Ventures, and also involving the likes of Beiersdorf, Infinity Recycling, CIECH Ventures, Zürcher Kantonalbank, Angel Invest, and ACE & Company.
Plastics like polyethylene terephthalate (PET) can be found in many of our daily items, such as clothing, packaging, and outdoor equipment.
Unfortunately, the high costs and difficulty required for sorting, separating, and cleaning these complex plastic streams, coupled with a lack of globally scaled solution, mean that only so-called perfect (clean, simple composition without other materials mixed) plastics get recycled.
DePoly, which was founded in 2020, aims to tackle the waste plastic problem with its chemical recycling technology. Currently, it converts all PET plastics and polyester textiles - originally sourced from fossil fuels - back into their main raw chemical components.
Those components are then sold back to the industry to make new virgin quality plastic items.
3. Dexory
UK-based AI and robotics company, Dexory, has secured $19 million in Series A funding led by European VC firm Atomico, with participation from existing investors Lakestar, Kindred, Capnamic, and Maersk Growth, the investment arm of the global logistics and container shipping company, Maersk.
As part of this, Atomico Partner Ben Blume will join Dexory’s board of directors.
“For those operating warehouses, ensuring 100% fulfilment ‘in time, all the time’ is crucial to meeting the demands of the modern consumer. A critical component to achieving this is high stock accuracy, but staff shortages, manual processes, and the speed demanded by customers means that critical decisions across the supply chain are currently being taken blindly,” says Dexory CEO and co-founder Andrei Danescu.
“Technology that is autonomous, real-time, intuitive, and integrated can have a transformative effect on the everyday efficiency, productivity, and accuracy of a warehouse - and form an integral part of revamping businesses supply chain strategies.”
4. Upp.
Upp., a London-based firm that uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to help retailers market and sell their products online, has raised $10 million in a seed funding round led by Bonfire Ventures.
Upp.AI, the company’s platform, analyses data to optimise ad spend, improve product discovery, and increase e-commerce sales.
The firm was founded by Ben White, who built and sold MessageLabs (acquired by Symantec in 2008 for $800 million), and Drew Smith, the lead platform architect of Upp.AI.
The latter is currently used by a number of retailers including Charles Tyrwhitt, OnBuy, Roman Originals and Nkuku. It is available in the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.
5. Utu
Utu, a technology company focusing on the tax free shopping space, has raised a $33 million Series B from investors including SC Ventures. It has also bought CardsPal, a Singapore-based FinTech that offers deals and promotions nearby to users.
It says that the acquisition will allow it to accelerate growth by leveraging CardsPal’s mobile first technology and incorporating its talent into the wider organisation.
Pivotal to utu’s decision to acquire CardsPal is SC Ventures’ support incubating the startup to become a full-fledged tech platform that utu can leverage to bolster its tax free shopping offerings.
6. Cart.com
Cart.com, a US-based specialist in e-commerce software and services, has announced a $60 million Series C equity funding round at a valuation of $1.2 billion.
This is an increase in valuation of nearly 50% since the startup’s Series B funding in February 2022.
Cart.com has raised $440 million in total since being founded in November 2020.
The Series C includes participation from B. Riley Venture Capital, Kingfisher Investment Advisors, Snowflake Ventures, Prosperity7 Ventures, Legacy Knight, and other strategic corporate and financial investors.
The company will use the new investment to meet increased demand from enterprise and B2B clients, accelerate its international expansion, and expand product development across its software portfolio.
“We are proud to partner with this prestigious group of investors to accelerate our growth and continue to deliver best-in-class solutions to our customers,” says Omair Tariq, CEO and Co-Founder at Cart.com.
“As a leading commerce software and services provider, we are focused on enabling our customers to compete and win across every channel through digital tools and digitally driven logistics capabilities.”
“We will continue to invest in our industry-leading commerce data capabilities, which are built to address the specific inventory, channel and supply chain challenges facing enterprises.”
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