Honcho is the UK’s first reverse auction marketplace for financial services that is revolutionising the car insurance market. In a reverse auction, the company works by inviting insurance providers to bid against one another. For just £1 a bid, insurance providers can go head to head to give the customer their best price and helping the latter to avoid any hidden charges and commission. Honcho's first major £830,000 funding round closed in March 2018 with support from crowd investors plus Maven Capital Partners. The company has just launched its first partner integrations, bringing its services to consumers of two major employee benefits platforms plus a major affiliate network. Honcho was selected for the 'Tech Nation Fintech programme 2019.' Honcho will use the investment to diversify its investor base and bring itself to a platform with support for Insurtech businesses, launch offers in other sectors, evolve its role as Platform as a Service (PaaS), and enhance marketing initiatives.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£1,433,325
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days to go:
Expired
investment:
£472,570
YEO (Your Eye Only) Messaging is a next-generation communication platform that connects business with people. The company asserts that its patented continuous facial recognition requires users' ID as an authentication key to display content, making it impossible for someone else to read a user's messages. The portal also doesn't allow others to screenshot, copy, save or forward content unless allowed by the user. YEO Messaging claims that its 'Geofencing' and 'Burn After Reading' features provide sender control even after content is sent guaranteeing delivery to the person rather than just the device. YEO was selected as one of eight companies worldwide for CyLon London’s Cohort 10 accelerator in the autumn of 2019 and has a valuation of £8.3 million when only considering issued shares. The company will use the investment to expand its team to accelerate the development of its desktop and enterprise solutions to drive revenues and further its partnership in the insurance and healthcare sectors.
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Expired
investment:
£823,622
Hexis is a fitness application that helps users become fitter scientifically, fuel smarter and feel on top of their game. The company argues that despite users becoming knowledgeable in fitness, courtesy of the internet, nutrition hasn’t become a core area of concern. Hexis asserts that its proprietary 'Carb Coding' tool amplifies the human body's response to exercise, enhancing performance, recovery and adaptation. Hexis stresses that its tool removes the guesswork from nutrition by predictively personalising a user's requirements as per their workouts and lifestyle. The company points out that its beta system was tested on 1,000 users. It aspires to dominate the personalised nutrition market that is set to grow to £11.7 billion by 2027 and counts athletes like Paul Dunne (Golf), Rohan Dennis (Cycling), and Lauren Delany (Rugby) amongst its star users. Hexis states it will use the investment to democratise nutrition and increase its user base across global markets.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£398,234
Bike.Rent is on a mission to become the world's best bike rental platform. It has over 350 bike stores across 18 countries, and each year connects hundreds of thousands of bike renters to tens of thousands of bikes across the globe to provide a consistent, high-quality booking experience. The company is working on upgrading its platform for the benefit of bike renters so that rental fleet details of all its bike stores are available from a single application. It asserts that this will allow customers to save time by booking bikes from any of the company's bike stores using the app instead of the conventional route of visiting the store and making a booking in person. The company witnessed over 200,000 bookings last year. Bike.Rent will use the investment to grow its business across different verticals.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£310,220
Grid Duck (GD) is an intelligent energy control system. It argues that only 14% of commercial buildings have a Building Management System (BMS) that allows them to switch off appliances when they are not needed automatically. GD is trying to bring the remaining 86% of buildings under its network. It has launched a wireless cloud-based system for companies to manage their energy consumption. Companies can check their energy consumption on an easy-to-use dashboard. GD is also evolving its technology into a self-learning system that supports time-of-use tariffs, demand response and renewables balancing. The company won the 2020 Rushlight Energy Reduction Award, and is ISO27001 certified for cybersecurity with regards to 'Penetration Test'. With the investment received, the company will grow its revenues and invest in New Product Development (NPD).
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£339,771
BitcoinPoint is a financial technology entity that allows anyone to buy Bitcoin easily. The company remarks that registration on crypto exchanges and the extremely high fees non-tech savvy users encountered with Bitcoin ATMs made Bitcoins unviable. BitcoinPoint aspires to change this by creating an ecosystem of agents, Point of Sale (PoS) machines and ATMs to make it easier to acquire cryptocurrency and even use it for remittances. The company has developed a 'Bitcoin Online Wallet' with zero network fees for its clients. It has overseen 21,500+ transactions, registered 2,500+ accounts, and signed an agreement to connect and provide services to 320,000 locations globally in Q1 2020. The company argues that its platform was supporting a network of 25 agents reaching over £200,000 in monthly transactions before lockdown. BitcoinPoint will use the investment to build a remittance service leveraging its crypto expertise via Bitcoin and the Stellar blockchain with stablecoins, allow cross-border instant transfer, and increase its UK network of agents.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£410,580
Human Forest (HF) is a social impact and digital marketing platform that combines sustainable micro-mobility and digital marketing by providing dockless e-bikes which are free for everyone to use for 10 minutes daily with no unlocking fee. HF aims to be a significant contender in the projected $150 billion micro-mobility market in Europe by 2030. HF's pilot project launched in the London Boroughs of Islington and Camden over summer 2020 witnessing almost 10,000 eco-enthusiasts making over 27,000 trips avoiding 10 tons of CO2 in the process. HF has onboarded entities like FT, Whole Foods, and Rude Health. The company is raising investment to build an even bigger human forest opening in more Boroughs with more e-bikes available for use.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£1,275,383
Hinterview is a technology entity that has come up with a video platform that enables professional recruiters to engage and communicate more effectively with their target audience. The company believes that 'remote is the future of work', accelerated by COVID-19, that will drive more interest in their technology. The company asserts that its technology can aid agency, in-house or even college & campus recruitment drives producing satisfactory engagements between recruiters and job seekers. The company is white-labelled, ultra-secure, and cloud-based with General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) compliance providing data privacy & security protocols to its clients. The company has 61,000 users active on its platform with 230+ active contracts. It will use the investment to further develop its sales and marketing functions and build departments internally as its business scales both in European and global markets.
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£421,505
Zobi is a technology company that aims to secure smart devices in a home against any potential attacks by a fraudster or fraudulent entity. Zobi's first device and app, Hedgehog, aims to address this issue. Hedgehog can anonymously monitor the Wi-Fi of a user, detect and block suspicious activity or devices, and show a user the security loopholes and the means to plug them. Zobi claims that there are currently around 135 million connected homes and, by 2025, the spending per year on smart home devices is said to be $160 billion. It aims to be a major contender in the smart home security sector. The company won the European Product Design Award 2020 and secured $120,000 worth of grants from Amazon and Google for its cloud services. Zobi will use the investment to build partnerships and its business development team, expand its offerings to other regions, scale-up marketing and PR, and recruit a senior Chief Technology Officer (CTO).
days to go:
Expired
investment:
£511,386
