Business-wise, Raisin now has more than 84 partner banks from 24 countries and eight platforms covering all of Europe and the UK.Frank Freund, cofounder and chief financial officer, told Sifted in 2019 that the company was eyeing up the retirement market for potential businesses to buy next.
That, and the company could be looking to take out some more smaller players with its war chest.Bolt had been a sub-brand of Taxify focused on e-scooters launched in Paris. Then in early 2020 it raised $155m in a funding round led by Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan to support plans for further expansion in Europe, The idea is that the service saves everyone time: users put in their symptoms and then organise a call rather than going to the GP every time there is a problem. In July 2019 it said that its total consumer and business lending was up by 76% to £2.4bn year on year, supported by growth in deposits from £1.4bn to £1.8bn. They are getting some consumer traction — at the end of last year, for example, Sainsbury’s became the first UK supermarket chain to start stocking edible insect snack-packs in its stores, after agreeing to a supply deal with UK-based Eat Grub.French startup Ÿnsect is one of the leaders in this space but, for now, it has its sights on the more prosaic $500bn animal feed market.Ÿnsect won $125m in funding in February 2019, which will go towards scaling up a highly-automated facility in France producing mealworms using techniques similar to those seen in indoor vertical farming (with the mealworms rotated around various optimised growing environments before meeting their end by being steamed, much like shrimp are).Led by Antoine Hubert, the company has around 25 patents covering all aspects of its production techniques.The challenge for Ynsect is regulation (weirdly the rules on what animals are allowed to eat are even stricter than the ones for humans) but also economics, as for now it’s reasonably expensive as a protein source.Ÿnsect’s market at the moment is mainly hypoallergenic dog food because pampered pets are an area where the cost of the product is less of a consideration. Alvise Nicoletti. Eventbrite - Enterprise Nation presents StartUp 2020: The UK's biggest start-up show of the new year - Saturday, 18 January 2020 at King's College London, London, England. The wider RPA sector is growing over 60% a year, positioning market leader UiPath well to benefit from the trend.Of course, companies are waking up to the fact that RPA is not just a magic bullet that can fix all their problems (indeed, it can create a fair few), but it’s still powerful if used correctly.In 2019, UIPath closed a Series D round of funding, raising $568m to become, at $7bn, one of the highest-valued RPA companies in the world. Firstly, it’s an insanely competitive market, with low margins and not much to distinguish all of the different rivals (apart from price).With too many players, the last 12 months has seen a round of consolidation with rival Delivery Hero selling its German business to Netherlands-based Takeaway.com and UK-based Just Eat and Takeaway.com toying with a merger to create a £9bn behemoth.Either way, all the dealings leaves €1.8bn-valued Deliveroo looking a little, well, small.In 2019 the company was also forced to pull out of Germany while at the same time Uber Eats is also making a big push for this market.Still, it’s not all bad news. The company, which says it does not see profitability as a “core metric”, is pushing big-time for growth, splashing cash to launch a huge advertising campaign to build on its 3.5m subscriber base.Led by founder Valentin Stalf, the bank in 2018 rolled out a #nobullshit advertising campaign in some of the 24 markets it is active in around Europe, with slogans such as “Nicht die Bank deines Opas” (“Not your grandad’s bank”) and “F¥€K Fees”.It is also joining rivals such as Revolut in making a play for the US market, which is going to be no easy feat (other neobanks in the US have had limited success).It’s been less plain sailing for N26 in Germany though, with the company coming under recent scrutiny from BaFin, the German financial authority, for falling behind on anti-money laundering processes.Rivals, most notably Revolut, have also come under similar scrutiny. Tink is a cloud-based platform that provides the infrastructure and data products that are enabling the future of financial services. The next big (and potentially dangerous) move for the company is international expansion into France, Spain and Texas. April 8-12, Prati Bus District Viale Angelico 52 Rome Startup Week arrives at the third edition and grows as a reference point for innovation and venture business within the Italian and European scene.
A totally independent bank that makes life easy. Starling also has a thriving banking services division (making its infrastructure available to third parties) and also a marketplace for third-party financial products.Led by Nikolay Storonsky, the company has around 6m customers, up from 1.5m a year ago, and is adding around 16,000 accounts a day.
Donec quam felis, ultricies nec, pellentesque eu. It has built a platform that is designed to sift through large volumes of medical data, for example clinical trials and academic papers, and make it faster to develop new drugs.The slight snag is that nobody really knows how well it is going to work and the company has recently seen its valuation slashed in half.In 2018 the company, which is backed by troubled UK stockpicker Neil Woodford, was valued at $2bn after it raised $115m. Graphcore is a semiconductor company that develops accelerators for AI and machine learning. First Data is a media platform that helps advertisers find online users based on their offline and online purchases. bunq is the Bank of The Free. March 16 th.
Deezer is the world’s most diverse, dynamic and personal global music streaming company and includes a unique personalisation model, Flow. But if they can do France, maybe can do anywhere? Immersive Labs is an on-demand cyber skills platform that rewards critical thinking, problem solving, and curiosity. Centrica is an award-winning energy technology company leading the delivery of advanced automated Demand Response