There’s excellent news in London and Scotland with PrimaryBid, TympaHealth, Umazi and Guiide securing tech funding.
PrimaryBid, a London-based fintech platform that works with retail investors and companies, has closed a $190 million (£139 million) Series C investment round led by SoftBank Vision Fund, with participation from existing investors.
Hearing health assessment system TympaHealth has picked up $8 million (£5.8 million) in new funding in London – financed by healthcare entrepreneurs Maurice Ferre and Arjun Desai, and joined by a global consortium of investors.
London-headquartered Umazi, a due diligence platform automating enterprise identity verification, has announced that it has secured $1 million (£734,000) investment from Innovate UK and other angel investors.
Scottish fintech Guiide has undertaken another round of (undisclosed) funding to boost its retirement planning platform.
PrimaryBid-s for Glory
According to PrimaryBid, in the past 18 months over 150 follow-on and IPO transactions have listed on the platform in the UK. PrimaryBid also expanded its geographical and product footprint by expanding its API services into Europe, conducting its inaugural transaction in France, and launching a new retail bond product.
Proceeds of the round will be used to expand PrimaryBid’s offering across continental Europe, using partnerships with ABN AMRO and Euronext, as well as launch in new geographies including the US. Key executive hires, including general managers for North America and the EU, will be announced in the coming months.
“Our platform deepens the relationships public companies have with their stakeholders and helps them make their equity and debt offerings more inclusive,” says Anand Sambasivan, CEO and Co-Founder of PrimaryBid.
For individual investors, they can use the platform to get “the same access to public market offers as institutional investors” via an app. For companies, the fintech entity provides technology for data, insights and tools to manage fundraising.
Its platform was used for the UK IPOs of Deliveroo, PensionBee and the US IPO of MCG Group (Soho House) in 2021.
This investment follows PrimaryBid’s $50 million (£37 million) Series B funding round in October 2020, which included investment from LSEG (London Stock Exchange Group), Molten Ventures (formerly Draper Esprit), OMERS Ventures, Fidelity International Strategic Ventures, ABN AMRO Ventures, Outward VC, Pentech and Hambo Perks.
TympaHealth Waxes Lyrical
London-based TympaHealth says along with the new round of funding it has added two members to its executive board – Desai (mentioned above) and Karin Ajmani.
Desai has scaled several medical and healthcare technology companies, including leading teams at Johnson and Johnson Innovation and Insightec. Ajmani holds board positions at multiple digital health companies – most recently serving as President and Chief of Strategic Development at Progyny.
Since launching commercially in 2021, TympaHealth has evaluated and treated over 150,000 people with hearing loss using its platform. The healthtech firm uses machine learning and remote review to detect problems.
The company is targeting growth in the UK, Europe and the US.
You Know Umazi Now
Umazi, which can mean ‘you know him’ in the Zulu language, has also announced a spate of partnerships with Artesian : DueDil & ComplyAdvantage.
The regtech startup offers distributed ledger technology (DLT) for the compliance process by creating digital identities featuring due diligence credentials. These are then verified and validated by regulated entities and housed on an open-source permissioned blockchain platform – allowing for a real-time audit process.
Umazi is currently in Founders Factory’s accelerator programme where it has been collaborating with Aviva on “potential opportunities” to automate onboarding of suppliers for enterprise businesses. The startup is also developing its proposition.
Along with Artesian : DueDil and ComplyAdvantage, Umazi works with African law firm Webber Wentzel.
Cindy van Niekerk, Umazi’s Founder and CEO, notes: “It’s astonishing that enterprise due diligence is still such a costly, time-consuming exercise that is repeated over and over again. It is clear due diligence is ripe for tech disruption and we are the first and only tech platform to take on the challenge.”
Guiide-ing Spirit
Guiide is based in Bearsden, a town in East Dunbartonshire, Scotland.
The past year has seen Guiide move from only offering an online free consumer site to providing bespoke versions of its platform to master trusts, employers and financial advisers. These licences have provided Guiide with its “first significant revenue”.
Primarily the funding will be used to develop Guiide+, an extension to its free online pension modelling tools. One feature, the Dashboard and Track function, will allow users to include live pension pots values, along with non pension savings and income all in one place.
The Dashboard and Tracking function of Guiide+ will provide support for future development of Guiide.auto. This aims to be a pension product with an automated pension pot withdrawal plan.
Previous funding was used to develop Guiide DB. A separate solution available only via defined benefit schemes. Early adopting schemes with around 10,000 members are now using the Guiide DB service.
Guiide’s aim is to make this the default option for trustees not appointing an adviser directly, with a goal to increase members with access to the Guiide DB service to at least 50,000 by the end of 2022.