Doordeck is a software that lets you unlock your office from your phone through integration with the building's existing access control infrastructure. Its software, along with its bespoke 'Tile' reader, makes unlocking doors from one's phone or smartwatch easy — by using the user's phone's internet connection & NFC scanner. Unlocking happens in a fraction of a second and securely using AES256 encryption. This is done by leveraging a building's existing access technology rather than ripping it all out. There are no expensive hardware costs, disruptive installation, and unreliable Bluetooth connections. The platform has been installed in hundreds of schools, offices, airports, and gyms across 10 countries including the UK, Russia, and the USA. It has been used to unlock doors more than 500,000 times. The company was selected as a finalist to showcase its innovation at the Airport Innovation Hub in Dubai. Recently, the company signed a distribution arrangement with Oprema- one of the largest and fastest-growing distributors of access control products in the UK. With the funds, the company will develop its team as well as build out more integrations with other market-leading access control systems.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£217,221
Vizopay aims to combine financial technology and environmental sustainability in the payments space. Its mission is to become the world's leading carbon offsetting payment platform to help reverse the effects of climate change before it’s too late. The company claims that the total online retail sector is worth $4.1 trillion in sales today. Vizopay argues that if its services were to be used for just 0.1% of these purchases, the company can plant 500 million trees, capturing up to 6 million tonnes of CO2 every year. Vizopay, once fully launched, will allow consumers a checkout option to plant trees at no extra cost and track their impact in real-time and help businesses to increase sales, improve brand loyalty and showcase their ESG efforts through accredited carbon offset programmes. The company is targeting a potential UK market size of 20 million consumers. It will use the investment to launch its Beta product in Q3 of 2021 and grow its business.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£148,120
HairFare is an end-to-end hair and beauty chair rental platform that connects beauty professionals to salons, studios and barbershops across the UK. It asserts that the hair and beauty industry was worth £10 billion in 2018 and is set to increase. HairFare aims to be a contender in this segment. HairFare asserts that it has expanded to five cities within the UK with no marketing budget. The platform has featured in media platforms including The Barber Magazine, Islington Gazette, Startups of London, Business Daily, ITProPortal, ExBulletin, Compsmag, and LinkedIn News, to name a few. It will use 40% of the investment for creating its proprietary app, 40% towards marketing to increase the number of business owners and beauty professionals on the platform, 10% towards setting up its merchandise line, and 10% towards establishing the HairFare Academy.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£57,736
Whitehall Finance (WF) is a Business-to-Business (B2B) financial technology platform that provides working capital to UK-based Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The company offers revolving credit facility that is withdrawable in currencies like GBP, USD or EURO or a combination of the above under a single facility agreement. It also permits buying companies to offer their suppliers an early payment for a discount, as well as, enables users to access Forex services and creditworthiness data of companies. WF has extended around £16 million in finance through 1,600+ transactions over its platform in the past one year. The company will use 30% of the investment to expand its sales, 20% to increase its marketing budget, 30% to increase operational capacity to service volume business, and 20% to develop key partner relationships.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£160,027
Clim8 is a sustainable investment company which allows people to invest into clean energy and green companies According to the United Nations, the world needs to invest $2.4 trillion dollars, every year, into clean energy, from now until 2035, to meet the climate change targets. Clim8 aims to capitalise on this objective by building a simple way to invest in a targeted portfolio of publicly listed companies that are making an impact in sectors such as clean energy, clean technology, sustainable food, smart mobility, and recycling. The company has successfully raised a seed round of £650,000 in 2019 from investors with backgrounds in finance, including ex Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank executives. With the investment, the company plans to launch its proprietary app, invest in recruiting human resources and promote marketing activities to broaden the brand identity.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£1,523,120
Nextfin is an FCA approved aggregation and rating portal for equity and debt crowdfunding investments.
AIM is shrinking, legacy stock markets are too expensive to maintain and do not serve the requirements of SMEs, banks are closing branches, lending less and are paying little or no interest to investors. As a result of this, there is a huge growth in equity crowdfunding and P2P lending which has seen the launch of hundreds of alternative lenders & platforms that has created a new c.£3bn marketplace, expanding at 66% p.a. There is no single portal or trusted ratings index for investors to compare on a like for like basis and no secondary market to facilitate exits.
* NextFin is the new trading name of Business Agent Ltd
The solution
NextFin aggregates equity and debt crowdfunding investments to create the alternative finance marketplace. This makes it easy for investors and lenders to find and compare opportunities by presenting all investment offerings in one place. With the addition of a free of charge ratings service investors will be able to view ratings of every equity crowdfunding pitch, every P2P site, and every equity crowdfunding site. NextFin’s technology will constantly track these companies and investments providing the investor real-time intelligence on which to base investment decisions. The platforms and entrepreneurs will be self-promoting and marketing their ratings driving thousands of visitors a month to the NextFin site, in the same way, businesses refer their potential clients to Trip Advisor and Trustpilot. There is an estimated 10 million website/platform visitors per month across the whole of the alternative finance market. NextFin is targeting to direct 5% of this highly profiled traffic to its platform from which it will earn between £5-£8 per click from advertisers and partners. In addition, an in-house brokerage service also earns between 1%-6% commissions on loan placements. A future revenue stream (not featured in the financials) will be developed once visitor traffic reaches critical mass. This will see Nextfin being able to realise the full value of its captured ratings data and visitor traffic by launching a secondary market, which is estimated to be a £5bn marketplace.
NextFin is raising £500k at a pre-money valuation of £2M to: • Develop P2P and Equity site ratings• Expand the management, infrastructure and marketing resource• Increase visitor traffic to 6m a year via rating referrals
Owing to the size of the market and rapid growth of the industry, enterprise valuations in alternative finance are based on visitor traffic, market share and registered users. Recently published valuations of companies with visitor traffic of over 6m per year are in excess of £70m. NextFin is the market-leading aggregator and has first-mover advantage. It has the potential to exceed these valuations because it is the whole of the market aggregator and is currently the only ratings service provider as it grows to achieve 500,000 visitors p.m.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£274,057
easyHire is a cloud-based technology platform that deals in event and construction equipment rentals. It possesses over 3 million pieces of inventory. easyHire is operating in the £23 billion equipment rental industry in Europe and aims to be the category leader in it. The company raised £1.5 million from leading investors and built a revenue-generating Software as a Service (SaaS) platform. It is backed by renowned entrepreneurs Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou and Fabio Cannavale, as well as, venture capital firm Pilabs. The company owns brand exclusivity for the easyToolhire and easyEventhire franchises across 30 territories. It continued to strengthen its business during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy. easyHire will use the investment to open up new markets, invest in product development, and boost its marketing initiatives.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£520,161
Black Young Professionals (BYP) Network is a company that empowers black professionals around the world to solve the problems they face through economic empowerment and connectivity. The company has grown from side hustle to a 6-figure revenue-generating company with over 40,000 members. BYP allows both members and corporate partners to avail a variety of offerings including webinars/events, blogs, newsletters, podcasts, a social networking app, and job board alerts. The company has about 60 corporate partners including Accenture, Facebook and Soho House. It has featured in publications including BBC, Roc Nation, and Forbes. BYP Network has won the Maserati Top 100 Most Innovative Companies and a place on The Mayor of London’s International Business Programme and London Stock Exchange Elite Program. The company will use the investment to have a user base of over 500,000 black professionals with 2% on its premium model in the next 18 months through marketing, scale its leadership, sales, and content teams, and improve its current technology platform to make it more intuitive.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£853,982
Howbout is a millennial-focused social calendar and planning application. The app allows a group of individuals to instantly find when they’re all free, easily organise any social plan & quickly manage what they’ve got on. The company soft-launched in December 2019 and after strong early traction raised £100,000 – co-led by mobile heavyweight Claire Valoti – to refine the product ahead of its full launch in July 2020. Howbout argues that its app downloads have grown >500% since then. The company has been featured 3x by Apple and >75,000 events have been organised by users in >100 countries, despite 100% UK marketing focus. Howbout was also named in TechRound’s 2020 list of top 100 startups. Howbout sees a socialising boom waiting to happen and believes itself uniquely positioned to capitalise on overdue drinks, catchups and holidays in a post-pandemic world. It will use the investment to focus on company growth and begin monetising.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£505,010
Equipsme is a company that aims to democratise health insurance by making it affordable for businesses. The company offers flexible fixed-price packages to employees while giving them the option to upgrade their package to avail more features upon payment. Members can speak to a general physician round the clock, have physiotherapy sessions, avail regular health checks and, if necessary, be quickly referred to a consultant for diagnosis and treatment. Members can access these features through a simple-to-use application. Since February 2018, the company has secured an exclusive 5-year insurance capacity deal with AXA PPP Healthcare and grown its members by 130.5% Year-on-Year (YoY) (to May 2020) with a 95% broker renewal retention rate. The company will use the investment to enhance its user experience and scale its marketing as it announces its partnerships with organisations such as Starling Bank and Simply Business.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£879,204
