NearSt, a British retail technology company, raised £2m in seed funding.
The round, which took the total raised by the company to £5m – following an earlier £2m raise in February 2020 – was led by Grosvenor Group, True Global, YYX Capital and Moscar Capital.
The company use the funds to accelerate expand operations and its business reach internationally.
Founded in 2015 by Max Kreijn (37) and Nick Brackenbury (32), NearSt has developed footfall boosting technology which enables physical retailers to show live in-store inventory to people searching online nearby. The system is used by convenience stores such as Nisa, Londis and Budgens, through to luxury boutiques like Creed, Christopher Kane and Hirsh, Google, which uses the technology to show physical shop stock directly in search results and on Google Maps, and Facebook to help drive the social network’s local shopping capabilities forward.
It works by enabling shops to install a small piece of software that automatically connects to any type of shop point of sale or inventory management system. Shortly after stores start seeing their entire in-store inventory appear in local search results, sending nearby shoppers in-store who might otherwise have ordered online.
FinSMEs
04/01/2020