Including Userled, Tilt, and Fresha: seven retail technology funding rounds you need to know about

RTIH rounds up seven retail systems ventures who have recently secured significant investments in their businesses, including GoWit, Revenew, TickPick, and Rep AI.

1. Userled

Userled, a startup focused on how B2B companies create and manage personalised marketing campaigns at scale, has raised £4 million in a pre-seed funding round led by LocalGlobe, with participation from Dig Ventures.

The funding will be used to continue hiring talent to build MarTech products.

Founded in 2023 by CEO Yann Sarfati (Revive, former sales lead at Salesforce and Incident.io) and CTO Tristan Saunders (Revive, tech lead at American Express and lead software engineer at nate), Userled is a no-code interface and AI powered platform automating the rapid creation and distribution of tailored, branded marketing campaigns.

Customers can deploy multiple personalised campaigns across all their target platforms from email, Linkedin, Meta and more.

Also, because Userled integrates with existing CRM systems and major IP reveal providers, they can track engagement, end-to-end journeys and conversion in real-time.

The platform is able to do this without the need for third-party cookies. Userled has built a cookieless fingerprinting and identity layer that enables a full view of their behaviour at the account and contact level, all while being fully GDPR and CCPA compliant.

It says that this will prove critical in the wake of Google, Apple and other tech companies disabling the use of third-party cookies later this year and into 2025.

The company has worked with the likes of Wayflyer, Deel, Onfido, Encord and Elastic.

2. Fresha

Fresha, a marketplace platform for beauty and wellness, has landed a $31 million venture debt facility from J.P. Morgan.

The funding will accelerate its expansion into new markets and drive the growth of its machine learning capabilities and AI-powered robotics.

By offering a subscription free business software with embedded payment processing and a consumer marketplace, Fresha helps beauty businesses, such as salons, barbershops, spas, and aesthetics clinics, to streamline their entire operations and connect with more customers.

To date, it has raised over $185 million in venture capital funding, including a $150 million Series C round in 2021 led by General Atlantic.

Fresha lays claim to a network of over 110,000 merchants, with a strong presence in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe.

The platform's reach extends across 120 countries, where customers book tens of millions of appointments monthly. To date, Fresha has facilitated transactions worth over $35 billion in gross merchandise volume.

In 2023, the company grew revenues by 67% year-over-year, with a similar level of performance expected in 2024. It says that it is approaching probability, although it did not provide further details in a press release.

3. GoWit

AdTech firm GoWit has secured $1.3 million in funding to help drive expansion across Europe and MENA.

Headquartered in Delaware, USA, GoWit works with marketplaces and retailers - including Kingfisher - to offer digital and physical advertising spaces to brands.

In turn, those brands, such as Nespresso and Reckitt, benefit from high impact ad formats displayed across onsite, off-site and in-store channels.

In this investment round, it received support from existing investors Formus Capital (based in the USA), APY Ventures, and Mindvest, while welcoming DCP as a new backer.

It follows a $1 million investment announced last year, which has helped the company to grow its teams in the UK, France, the Netherlands, and the Middle East.

Emrah Adsan, Co-founder and CEO at GoWit, says: "Generally, retailers and marketplaces face difficulty integrating retail media platforms into their existing systems.”

“With GoWIt, the integration will soon take as little as 15 minutes, allowing them to set up their advertising campaigns with a completely self-service solution and start earning instant revenue from their retail media ads.”

“Our latest investment will enhance our product development and support our ambitious growth plans in central Europe, the MENA region and North America”

“Our goal is to demonstrate to all retailers that they can set up advertising campaigns and generate revenue without additional fees or complex integration processes."

4. Revenew

Checkout.com alumni have raised $4.55 million in funding for PayTech startup Revenew.

Los Angeles-based VC firm Fika Ventures led the round for Revenew, which aims to help platform businesses like Uber or Spotify to streamline their payments operations. Dash Fund and TTV Capital also participated.

Rather than acting as a payments processor akin to Checkout.com, Revenew provides an operating system, which companies can use to manage, streamline and optimise existing payment stacks. 

It aims to offer an extra layer of visibility that allows clients to track metrics such as the margin between the cost of providing payments and revenue generation, identify the most profitable customers and provide insight into how additional payments flows can increase revenue.  

5. Tilt

Tilt, a real-time shopping platform founded by ex-Revolut employees, has closed an $18 million Series A funding round led by Balderton Capital.

There was also participation from existing investors TQ Ventures, Earlybird and Seedcamp.

Founded by Neil Shah and Abhi Thanendran, Tilt focuses on the fashion space and claims to address several key problems in the current e-commerce landscape.

Traditional online shopping can feel impersonal and disconnected, the company says.

This leads to a passive, often frustrating experience for buyers. Additionally, the static nature of most e-commerce platforms lacks the urgency and engagement required to really drive sales for sellers.

Tilt lets buyers engage directly with sellers through real-time streams, Similar to in-store shopping, deals and offers are available only while users are actively engaged on the app.

Along with features such as auctions, boosts and interactive events, Tilt has attracted over half a million users since its launch just a year ago. 

6. TickPick

Brighton Park Capital has announced a $250 million investment in ticket marketplace, TickPick, to accelerate its growth and scale operations.

Symphony Ventures, golfer Rory McIlroy’s investment partnership, has joined as a strategic investor.

TickPick was founded in 2011 by Co-CEO's Brett Goldberg and Chris O’Brien who saw an unmet need in the market for a cost-effective, transparent solution that puts the consumer first.

It has partnerships with such professional sports teams as the Philadelphia Eagles and the Los Angeles Rams.

“We're thrilled to announce our latest growth investment, which will help accelerate our ability to transform the ticketing industry,” says O’Brien.

“We founded TickPick with the unwavering commitment to deliver a transparent and hassle-free ticket-buying experience for consumers. This investment will allow us to deepen this commitment by accelerating the pace of product innovation, raise our brand awareness, and reach more customers than ever before.”

7. Rep AI

Rep AI Technologies has raised $8.2 million in funding.

Led by Osage Venture Partners (OVP), the investment will fuel further development of the company’s e-commerce sales tool.

Built leveraging a proprietary combination of behavioral AI and large language models (LLMs), the tool enables merchants to provide personalised sales assistance at scale. It can be integrated with existing tech stacks.

OVP says that it selected Rep AI for its strong market traction and compelling value proposition.

Over 500 merchants worldwide are using its solution. Joining OVP in this round are Flashpoint Ventures and Oryzn Capital.

“Rep AI’s innovative use of cutting-edge AI to provide personalised sales assistance at scale has the potential to redefine customer experiences and boost conversion rates across the e-commerce industry," says Sean Dowling, Partner at OVP.

“We are excited to lead this round and look forward to supporting Rep’s continued growth and innovation."