Back in May, NCM celebrated the success of UK based startup Huboo, which provides end-to-end fulfilment services for online retailers of all sizes. Now, we’re pleased to report Huboo has raised £14 million in Series A funding. The round has been led by Stride.VC, with participation from Hearst Ventures. Existing investors, including NCM clients Episode 1 and Ada Ventures alongside Maersk Growth and True Capital, all followed on bringing Huboo’s total funding to £18 million to date.
Huboo CEO and co-founder Martin Bysh said, “The vast majority of independent retailers are currently moving online. The pandemic has provided the catalyst for a mass shift into multi-channel commerce over the next five years… The composition of supply chains is changing due to the pandemic, with retailers forced to pay more attention to where they’re sourcing their products and how to build more robust supply chains”. In addition, Bysh says the direct-to-consumer (D2C) “revolution” is rapidly gaining pace, “with a new breed of agile young D2C businesses bypassing conventional retail channels to engage directly with consumers”. At the same time, retail fulfilment is becoming more complex as customers continue to demand faster delivery times.
Huboo will use the new funding to support three strategic priorities:
- software development
- UK expansion
- establishing an on-the-ground European presence as Brexit hardens.
This will see Huboo expand its software development team in the next year to further increase the capabilities of its fulfilment software platform. In order to support the growth of Huboo’s clients, the startup will also be opening a third UK warehouse in October 2020, with a fourth warehouse planned to open in January 2021.
Source | TechCrunch