Even though a lot of people believe that Brexit will harm UK investment and growth, London startups do not seem to be threatened by it at all. In fact it’s the other way around and they go from strength to strength. These days British startups represent a fast growing market supported by a progressive government and deep-pocketed investors.
With that in mind it is not surprising that London startup scene is predicted to grow and thrive in 2017. Below is the list of the most promising startups according to the leading industry voices.
Thanks to Deliveroo, your favourite food can be delivered directly to your door in only 32 minutes. This company has already become one of the biggest meal-delivery providers in the world and it keeps on expanding its service in both new and existing markets. Interestingly, in August 2016 the Deliveroo team announced that they have raised £210m in funding, which is a huge amount for a British startup, and shows that investors are totally confident in Deliveroo’s business model.
Investors: Accel Partners, Bridgepoint, DST Global, Felix Capital, General Catalyst Partners, Greenoaks Capital, Hoxton Ventures, Hummingbird Ventures, Index Ventures, JamJar Investments, Nokia Growth Partners (NGP).
Having raised capital of $300m from the leading investment groups since 2010, Funding Circle is considered to be one of the best lending platforms in the world. Their marketplace can compete with the majority of traditional banks in making finance fast, simple and fair, while their backers collectively manage more than $5 trillion. Funding Circle has already helped thousands of businesses expand with a total sum of £1,821,867,400 lent to British businesses.
Investors: Accel Partners, Baillie Gifford, BlackRock, DST Global, Index Ventures, Ribbit Capital, Sands Capital Ventures, Temasek Holdings, Union Square Ventures
TransferWise is a money transfer service which allows their customers to send money abroad without any hidden charges. TransferWise is up to 8 times cheaper than most traditional banks, moreover, you will receive updates via email for each stage of the transfer on where exactly your money is. Among TransferWise’s investors are Index Ventures, IA Ventures, Seedcamp, Valar Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz and Baillie Gifford.
Having created the first operational Enterprise Immune System in the world, every day the Darktrace team helps prevent damage from cyber attacks. Acting faster than any security specialist, Darktrace is extremely powerful in detecting so-called “abnormal” activity online. The company has grown rapidly since its foundation, increasing revenues by more than 600% every year. Darktrace has raised more than $90 million in funding from the leading investors including TenEleven Ventures, Talis Capital, Invoke Capital, Hoxton Ventures, SoftBank, Summit Partners and KKR & Co.
SimilarWeb gives their clients access to the global market intelligence, which is essential to grow their digital market share and win the market. With the experienced developers and data analysts on board, SimilarWeb software empowers you with the insights for any website, allowing to identify your competition’s online tactics, reveal emerging trends and discover new opportunities. SimilarWeb is backed by capital funds and individual investors, who invested in the company over $60m.
Investors: #Angels, Docor International Management, Liron Rose, Lord David Alliance, Moshe Lichtman, Naspers, Omer Kaplan, Yossi Vardi
Blippar offers an image-recognition platform, which is based on artificial intelligence and augmented reality. Their app is really simple at use – just point your mobile phone’s camera at the object and it will provide you with information about it, be it a product, a famous painting or a photo of any celebrity. At the moment Blippar’s database counts over 70,000 “public figures”, but shortly users will also be able to upload their own faces into the program. However, developers guarantee that there will not be any privacy issues, because users will have full control over what is shown in the system.
Investors: Khazanah Nasional, Qualcomm Ventures
Another promising food delivery service, which has more than 62,000 restaurant partners and 100+ cuisine types available to offer to 16.6 million customers all over the world. Things are going well for Just Eat and the company looks to continue their growth into more countries throughout the world. Lately Just Eat has announced that the company is acquiring 2 of its food delivery competitors: the U.K. branch of Berlin-based Delivery Hero for £200m and Canadian startup SkipTheDishes for £66.1m.
Investors: 83North, Index Ventures, Redpoint, Venrex Investment Management, Vitruvian Partners
Nutmeg’s flexible and transparent platform allows its clients to easily monitor their invest performance. Being the UK’s first discretionary investment service operating online, Nutmeg makes managing your investment portfolio as easy as 1-2-3. Currently Nutmeg manages nearly £600m on behalf of 25,000 clients, and even despite a high risk investment, the majority of their customers are more than satisfied with the tool.
Investors: Armada Investment Group, Balderton Capital, Bart Swanson, Charles Dunstone, Convoy Investment Services, Daniel Aegerter, Daniel Curran, Draper Associates, Flight Ventures, Nigel Wray, Pentech Ventures, Schroders, Taipei Fubon Bank, Tim Draper
Farfetch is a global network of more than 400 fashion boutiques offering their clients an exciting shopping experience. The unique model of Farfetch guarantees you a huge variety of pieces to shop, from the top luxury brands to the newest fashion labels. All the independent boutiques within their community have been carefully selected and are located everywhere from New York, Milan and Paris to Tokyo, Riyadh and Seattle.
Investors: Advent Venture Partners, Ceyuan Ventures, Condé Nast, DST Global, Eurazeo, e.ventures, Fabrice Grinda, Felix Capital, FJ Labs, IDG Capital Partners, Index Ventures, Jose Marin, Temasek Holdings, Vitruvian Partners.
WorldRemit is a money transfer service which has already helped thousands of migrants send money to their friends and family all over the world. Sending money with WorldRemit is fast, safe and easy as pie: just select country, add recipient details and make the transfer. Currently the service is available in more than 50 countries and over 125 destinations. Recently WorldRemit has announced that the company has partnered with Xpress Money in order to open up new remittance routes to Bangladesh due to the growing demand for instant transfers in the country.
Investors: Accel Partners, Project A Ventures, Silicon Valley Bank, TCV
Launched in 2005, Zopa is considered to be the world’s first and the largest European peer-to-peer lending service. The company allows borrowers and lenders to deal directly with each other and, therefore, imposes a major threat to traditional bank loans. Zopa has already helped over 230,000 people improve their homes, buy new cars, or just consolidate their debts, while the company’s investors have lent more than £1.9 billion directly to UK consumers since 2005.
Investors: Arrowgrass Capital, Augmentum Capital, Balderton Capital, Benchmark, Bessemer Venture Partners, Draper Associates, Forward Partners, Orange Growth Capital (OGC), Wellington Partners
The SwiftKey team believes that technology should adapt to people and is committed to providing their users with the world’s most intelligent and personalized keyboard software. SwiftKey Keyboard for iPhone and Android adapts to the way users type, so they spend less time correcting mistakes and get accurate emoji predictions, based on what they have just typed. Today SwiftKey is featured on over 300m devices and the company cooperates with the leading smartphone manufacturers, who integrate SwiftKey technology into their products.
Investors: Accel Partners, Andrew Thornton, Cambridge Capital Group, Carl Uminski, Index Ventures, Jon Craton, Nick Hynes, Nihal Mehta, Octopus Ventures, Richard Brennan
Mimecast is a SaaS-based email management platform that enables companies to control and protect their data and business communications. Mimecast’s software already protects the email of almost 22,000 customers in over 100 countries worldwide against targeted attacks, spam and data leaks. Their online technology platform is easy to manage, adaptable to their clients’ changing needs and offers uninterrupted access to email from any device.
Investors: Dawn Capital, Index Ventures, Insight Venture Partners
Seedcamp is a First Round Fund, that invests smart capital in pre-seed and seed stage startups and provides a lifelong platform for supporting and educating the most ambitious founders. Since 2007 Seedcamp has backed almost 200 companies within a wide range of sectors and 91% having raised further funding of $350m. Among the most notable investors in Seedcamp and their companies there are: Ben Horovitz, Max Levchin, Richard Branson, Peter Thiel, Philip Schindler, Solina Chau, Andrew McCollum, Marten Mickos and many others.
Investors: ACT Venture Capital, Anthemis Group, Balderton Capital, BDMI, DN Capital, Gimv, HENQ Invest, LocalGlobe, REV, Samosa Digital, Venrex Investment Management
Last, but not least – Splento is the youngest company on the list, but one of the fastest growing. It provides high quality professional photographers on demand. Everything is integrated into one cost effective, user friendly platform, which allows clients to book professional event photographers in under a minute at short notice and at a fraction of the usual cost. Splento has serviced over 6,500 clients to date (including Intercontinental Hotel, Bannatyne Group, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, IoD, The Royal Family, FinTech Connect, Home Office, Bournemouth Football Club, WebSummit) and has become Britain’s Leading Photography in less than two years since its founding in 2015.
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