Words: Tom Ward
Deliveroo’s marquee IPO may not have gone quite as planned, but to write off British start-ups entirely would be foolish to say the least.
From healthcare companies helping to streamline the process of caring for yourself and your staff to freight companies looking to make business simpler and payment apps designed to give power to employees, every start-up on this list shares a mission of making your life that little bit more efficient.
Some are already making waves; some are just starting to ripple — all are worthy of your attention.
Ali Parsa, founder of Babylon Health
Babylon Health
Funds raised to date: £457 million
Using AI to connect patients with healthcare providers, Babylon Health received a huge boost during the Covid-19 pandemic, reaching total funding of over £457 million last year. With health and wellbeing increasingly at the forefront of consumers’ lives, its future may be very healthy indeed.
Poplar Studio
Funds raised to date: £1.5 million
This up-and-coming 3D and AR creative platform will help you pull together engaging campaigns on demand. Whether you’re designing for marketing or retail, both small and large businesses can commission bespoke AR projects from the best experts in the industry. Best of all, the whole process is not only simple and quick, but affordable.
Weavr
Funds raised to date: £2.8 million
This fintech start-up helps you embed banking payments into your product almost instantly – be it a mobile app, SaaS platform of in office operations. The brand has been built from the ground up, partnering with specific payment providers and financial institutions to make the user experience near seamless.
Cazoo
Funds raised to date: £429 million
This used car start-up is on a roll, chalking up increasingly impressive rounds of funding since its inception in 2018. Along the way it’s acquired firms like Drover and Cluno and put together a team of over 520 employees. Designed to help you get your next car online as easily as you’d order anything else, it has pioneered a new, less stressful, more reliable model of how we purchase vehicles.
Graphcore founders Simon Knowles and Nigel Toon
Tessian
Funds raised to date: £43 million
There’s nothing worse than a mis-sent email. Thank the digital gods, then, for Tessian, which analyses millions of data points across your organisation’s email network to detect unusual patterns of behaviour and potentially wrongly-addressed memos. To date over 70 British law firms utilise the service, alongside Schroders and Dentons.
Pangaia
Funds raised to date: N/A
Another start-up garnering rave reviews is London-based sustainable apparel brand Pangaia. Touting itself as a ‘materials science brand’, it incorporates everything from leather made from waste grapes from the Italian wine industry to recycled versions of more traditional materials including wool and cashmere. With 120 people on its payroll already and the world becoming more eco-conscious, this one looks set to stick around for a long time.
Moonbug Entertainment
Funds raised to date: £86.8 million
Founded in 2018, this children’s entertainment company currently employs 195 staff and has raised an impressive £86.8 million so far. Its bread and butter is creating and distributing content which teaches children vital life skills, including empathy and compassion. Which is nice.
Graphcore
Funds raised to date: £503 million
Founded in 2016, Graphcore develops processors specifically designed for AI. It’s been leading the pack from the start. In July 2020 it unveiled new hardware based on the GC200 processor – a 823-square-millimeter integrated circuit with 1472 computational cores and 900MB of local memory. In other words, powerful stuff. A December 2020 round of funding raised $222 million (£160 million).
Dija, the start up that hopes to deliver groceries in 10 minutes or less
Trussle
Funds raised to date: £7.5 million
This online mortgage provider raised £7.5 million in 2020 with backing from the likes of Rabo Frontier Ventures. Competition is tough, but with its aim of making mortgages faster, safer and more secure for the customer, Trussle is so far managing to stand out from the crowd.
Instadeep
Funds raised to date: £5 million
Founded in Turkey but based in the UK, InstaDeep seeks to help consumers navigate the growing world of AI interaction. It delivers AI-powered decision making systems with expertise in both machine intelligence research, and concrete business deployments. In other words, it has you covered.
Dija
Funds raised to date: £118 million
One of the newest start-ups on this list, Dija was founded in 2020 with the aim of fast-tracking your grocery deliveries. Backed by former Deliveroo execs, it recorded one of Europe’s largest ever seed rounds at £14.76 million, its USP being that it guarantees stock availability, working with innovative UI to ensure a speedy delivery.
Wagestream
Funds raised to date: £65 million
This three year-old UK brand is generating serious buzz; a £20 million round of funding last summer just brought its total to £65 million, growing its team to 110 people. It works by allowing employees access to their wages as they’re earned. Which is one of those ideas that sounds so obvious one wonders why no one else thought of it. So far its clients include the NHS, Bupa and Holland & Barrett.
Hopin, which has been quietly re-defining the home working experience
Beacon
Funds raised to date: £10.94 million
When it comes to freight, Beacon has it covered. From global road, ocean and air freight to storage, customs and insurance, it will take care of everything. Last June it secured a Series A funding round of roughly £10.94 million, backed by none other than Jeff Bezos – a sign, surely, that Beacon has a bright future to come.
Salt Pay
Funds raised to date: £118 million
Salt Pay aims to be a different kind of payments company, providing SMEs the ability to onboard in minutes, automating their operations and maximising profits in the process. With over 200 employees and its last round of funding having taken place in November 2020, this one might not be a bad bet.
Huboo
Funds raised to date: £16.75 million
Founded in 2019, this e-commerce fulfilment start-up aims to help your company spend less time on order fulfilment and more time focusing on your bottom line. It does this by storing your stock, picking and packing it automatically. With over 115 employees, it just completed a Series A round of funding in 2020.
Snyk
Funds raised to date: £324 million
Another start-up recording incredible rounds of investment, Snyk received a private valuation of $2.6 billion in January 2020. Six years in to its journey, its track record in helping developers spot vulnerabilities in open source codes has made it a valuable ally to anyone concerned about software safety.
Hopin
Funds raised to date: £36 million
While Zoom colonised the working from home sphere, Hopin has been quietly refining the at-home experience since 2019, leading to a huge level of interest. With a staff of 390 employees, it offers online conferencing in the form of everything from networking to analytics and sponsors.
Harry the Robot — created at the Small Robot Company — with
Sam Watson-Jones and
Joe Allnutt
The Small Robot Company
Funds raised to date: £2 million
Founded by farmers to tackle the problem of decreasing agricultural yields, The Small Robot Company uses actual robots (heights and sizes vary) to survey a given farm’s fields in order to create a digital map. From this, precision spraying and planting can take place, all driven by AI. Waitrose has tripled the tech on some of its own farms with positive results.
Zencargo
Funds raised to date: £14.4 million
The European logistics market is worth $427 billion. Zencargo is looking to cash in by digitising operations. After raising £14.4 million in its Series A funding round, it will likely be looking for another successful funding round this year. Most recently, it collaborated with DHL to deliver PPE to NHS workers.
Unmind
Funds raised to date: £7.2 million
This workplace mental health platform became one of the health sector’s largest Series A fund raisers last February after garnering £7.2 million in backing. Its selling point is the Unmind Index, a clinically-backed assessment which helps users understand their own mental health, then anonymises that data to help employers recognise potential areas that need to be improved within their team.
Plum
Funds raised to date: £6.2 million
Offering a helping hand to first time investors, Plum offers advise about where and how to invest. So far over one million users have employees its services in their own financial endeavours. With offices in London and Athens – and a rapidly growing number of employees – it looks like Plum might be on to a winner.
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