Participated · Series D · Nov 2018

Festicket operates an online marketplace for festival tickets and travel packages, letting users buy tickets and book hotels and transfers, discover festivals via Spotify, and search by artist, festival type, or country. Founded in 2012 in the UK, the platform reports more than 2.5 million active users across 100+ countries and partnerships with about 1,200 festivals. Festicket maintains offices in London (headquarters), San Francisco, Amsterdam, Berlin and Porto. The company positions itself as one of the world’s largest festival-ticketing platforms and sells tickets for major Spanish festivals such as Mad Cool, Primavera Sound and FIB. The recent fundraising is intended to support international expansion and to improve the user experience. No financial metrics beyond the fundraising and user/partner counts are disclosed in the article. Festicket operates an online marketplace for festival tickets and travel packages, covering more than 1,200 music festivals globally. The platform works with a network of over 4,000 travel and accommodation suppliers and has served more than 2 million travellers since launching in 2012. Headquartered in London, Festicket also has offices in Amsterdam, Berlin, Porto, and San Francisco. The company plans to use its latest capital to fuel expansion into North America and Asia. Financially, Festicket raised $10.5 million in the current round and has raised a total of $24.2 million to date. Board changes tied to the round include the addition of Eyal Malinger of Beringea and Treatwell’s COO Ben Leaver. Festicket operates an online marketplace that enables music fans to discover and book festival tickets and bundled travel packages (tickets, accommodation, travel and add‑ons). The platform lists 500+ music festivals across 40 countries and connects to a network of 1,000 suppliers for accommodation and travel. It reports a community of 900k+ fans, 2M unique monthly visitors and has served 250,000+ travelers from 120 countries. Led by CEO Zack Sabban and CPO Jonathan Younes, Festicket aims to expand its operational and marketing efforts to grow its live music fan community, supplier base and global brand. The company plans to deploy native‑speaking teams and local offices to each market. Festicket has raised $6.3M in the reported round and $9.68M in total to date. Festicket operates a discovery and booking platform that lets users browse a curated directory of music festivals and purchase package deals that include tickets, transport and accommodation. The product combines festival event curation, social features and a festival-related travel booking engine. The company aims to simplify the process of attending festivals and open the market to a wider audience by consolidating multiple providers into a single purchase. Festicket plans to use new capital to accelerate international expansion, grow the team and further develop product features such as inspirational content and recommendation tools. Founders Zacharie Sabban (CEO) and Jonathan Younes (CTO) launched the company in early 2012. In terms of traction, Festicket works with more than 200 music festivals globally—including Tomorrowland, Ultra Europe and Leeds & Reading—and claims over 300,000 festival-goer members. Festicket operates a consumer-facing site that lets users browse a curated directory of music festivals and purchase single-package bookings that include tickets, transport and accommodation. The company also offers a B2B white-label product that powers festival sites, deepening partnerships and enabling sales directly on official festival websites. It partners with more than 40 top music festivals across Europe and generates revenue by taking a 20% commission on each element of the packages it sells. Festicket reports an average basket price of around €290 and says it has 27,000 active members, 73% of whom are from the UK, France and Germany. The startup plans to use the new capital to further develop the platform, extend its product range, bolster sales and marketing (including key hires) and accelerate European expansion. Founded in early 2012, the company is building both consumer and B2B distribution channels to widen access to the festival market.

Led · Series B · Feb 2018

LiveLike provides heavily customized, white‑labeled VR apps that let broadcasters offer interactive viewing experiences — multiple camera angles, virtual suites, pre-produced content and social features. Its platform powers both live streams and achieved VR footage, and the company often handles VR production and distribution for events. LiveLike has pursued league‑level deals (for example with the French Tennis Federation) to produce entire events and expose its tech to multiple broadcasters at once. In 2017 the company produced 76 games across five countries and streamed over 300 hours of original VR sports content. The startup has experimented with social integration (a feature to invite friends into a virtual suite via Facebook) and is exploring AR and MR as future viewing formats. LiveLike plans to use new funding to support general growth and to build the architecture required for large‑scale live streaming. LiveLike provides an end-to-end white-label solution that enables sports broadcasters to stream live content into VR, placing fans in virtual suites, press boxes, stands, or sidelines. The platform includes social capabilities, in-depth statistics, and on-demand replays, and is designed to preserve broadcasters' branding, sponsors, and content rights. LiveLike operates as a B2B2C business, building branded apps for broadcasters while serving the end-user fan experience. The team of five cofounders combines design, engineering, sales, and production expertise and positions the company to scale production and distribution with partners. The startup has focused on interactivity and social features from the start and plans to roll out several new features and additional broadcast partnerships in the near term. LiveLike aims over time to replace the traditional television experience with a closer-to-live-game alternative, while recognizing that the product is currently a supplementary viewing option. Financially, the company raised $5.01 million in its recent raise and noted fundraising took longer due to early-stage market skepticism about VR.

Participated · Equity · Dec 2015

Masabi delivers Fare Payments-as-a-Service (FPaaS) via its cloud-based Justride platform, combining SaaS and cloud computing to modernize transit ticketing. Its platform is designed to replace legacy, monolithic automated fare collection systems with quicker, lower-capex upgrades. Masabi operates in nine countries and serves more than 140 customers, with deployments in cities including Denver, Las Vegas, Boston, Los Angeles, San Antonio, Columbus, Calgary, Birmingham, Valencia, Bilbao and Osaka. The company plans to use the recent strategic investment to accelerate product development and expand deployments across North and South America, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The announcement frames Masabi as continuing to disrupt legacy ticketing by enabling transit agencies to adopt new consumer-facing innovations more rapidly and cost-effectively. Masabi was advised in the round by CKS Finance and a legal team from Smoosmiths. Masabi builds and operates Justride, a Fare Payments-as-a-Service platform that enables mobile ticketing, account-based fare collection and contactless payments for public transport. The company supports integrations with partners such as Uber, Transit, Jorudan and Kisio Digital and serves over 70 clients across 13 countries. Masabi processes more than $1 billion in annual transport ticketing sales and continues to add features such as tap-to-ride using contactless bank cards, mobile phones or smartcards. The company emphasizes replacing bespoke fare collection systems with a quickly deployable, continuously updated platform to enable Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS). Masabi’s expansion plans are being supported by a newly finalised investment from Shell to accelerate global roll-out of the Justride platform. The company lists investors including Mastercard and Keolis and has offices in New York, Denver, London and Cluj. Masabi is a Software-as-a-Service ticketing and payments provider for public transport, led by CEO Brian Zanghi. Its core product, the Justride fare-collection platform, supports mobile ticketing, account-based full fare collection using contactless bank cards, mobile devices and smartcards, and a Justride SDK to enable Mobility as a Service integrations. The Justride SDK allows journey planners and micromobility providers to integrate public transit into their apps, with integrations including Uber, Transit, Jorudan and Keolis. Justride is in operation with more than 50 transport agencies across ten countries, serving customers from tier-one cities to local bus operators such as Boston MBTA, New York MTA, National Express and others. The company operates offices in New York, London, Denver and Cluj. Masabi intends to continue expanding its mobility platform and drive digital transformation for transit agencies and operators of all sizes. Masabi offers JustRide, a cloud-based, end-to-end mobile ticketing and fare collection platform that includes apps for ticket purchase, display and inspection plus back-end infrastructure for payments, ticket management, inspection, customer service, reporting and real-time analytics. The platform is designed to reduce the cost of fare collection by removing the need for costly hardware and ticket media while providing agencies with big-data analysis and visualization tools to better plan and optimize services. Masabi works with more than 22 transport operators and agencies worldwide, including Virgin Trains, Abellio, Thames Clippers, New Orleans RTA, Boston’s MBTA, Las Vegas, Transport for Athens, and New York’s MTA. The company is expanding strategic partnerships—notably with MasterCard and Keolis—to accelerate deployments and product integrations. MasterCard and Masabi are integrating the MasterPass digital wallet into JustRide, and Keolis is working to include Masabi’s ticketing in its PlanBookTicket offering. Masabi raised $12 million in growth funding to support global operations and speed to market. Masabi develops and deploys JustRide, a cloud-based end-to-end mobile ticketing and fare-collection system that includes mobile apps for ticket purchase, use, and ticket agent validation. The UK company positions its product as a lower-cost, faster-to-deploy alternative to traditional fare-collection systems and promotes an “agile” cloud approach. Its technology is already in use by more than 13 UK transit agencies and retail brands, including Virgin Trains, First Group, CrossCountry Trains and thetrainline.com, and it deployed JustRide for Boston’s MBTA in late 2012. Masabi plans to add NFC support in the future. The company recently hired Josh Robin as VP of Strategy and Business Development for North American operations as part of its U.S. expansion. It is opening a New York office to accelerate deployments with U.S. transit agencies.

Participated · Equity · Oct 2014

Wahanda is a UK-based platform that lets consumers find and book hair and beauty appointments by time and location while offering salon management software, usually for free. It monetizes bookings by taking a commission—20% in the UK and 15% in the rest of Europe. The company has pursued growth through roll-ups and acquisitions; the purchase of ZenSoon added about 650 salons and marked its fifth acquisition, bringing the platform to roughly 20,000 salons. Wahanda recently received €65M ($73M) in funding from Recruit Holdings, which now owns 80% after buying out other investors. Leadership says the company will shift toward integrating acquisitions into a single platform while continuing European consolidation and eyeing a likely U.S. acquisition within the next year. It has no current plans to expand beyond hair and beauty and cites a ~€100B ($100B) European market with fewer than 2% of salons online as its opportunity. Wahanda is a London-based hair and beauty marketplace that allows customers to browse and book appointments at over 12,000 salons and spas throughout Europe. The company employs 210 people across Europe. It intends to use the funding to accelerate its European growth and expected to be in eight countries by the end of June, with further expansion plans thereafter. In the months prior to the funding announcement Wahanda acquired Germany’s Salonmeister (October 2014), Austria’s Beautycheck (April 2015) and acqui-hired the Lithuanian mobile app development agency LemonLabs team (January 2015). The company secured $46M in funding which coincided with an ownership change involving its existing investor Recruit Holdings. Wahanda operates a hair and beauty marketplace focused on booking and industry-leading software for customer service. The company positions itself as a kind of "Zappos for health and beauty." This year Wahanda raised $26 million in growth funding from RGIP, Fidelity Growth Partners and Lepe Partners. It has acquired Salonmeister and plans to integrate the two businesses into a single global platform. Salonmeister is Berlin-based, was founded two years ago, and serves over 1,000 spa and salon suppliers across Germany, Austria and Switzerland. Wahanda is explicitly pursuing continental European scale; the article notes no main competitor in Europe while citing U.S. players StyleSeat and Lifebooker and Japan's HotPepperBeauty as analogs. Wahanda operates an online health and beauty marketplace that lets people search for and book treatments, obtain discounted offers, and review outlets. The site uses a Grouponesque offers model and is described as a vertical marketplace akin to TripAdvisor or OpenTable. Since launching, it has grown to about 10 million visitors a year, 250,000 businesses listed and 5,000 exclusive health and beauty offers. The company was founded in 2008 by Lopo Champalimaud and Salim Mitha; backers include Brent Hoberman, Stefan Glaenzer, Ambient Sound Investment, founding engineers at Skype, and Wolf Hengst. CEO Lopo Champalimaud says the vision is to "do for health, beauty and wellness what Amazon did for books." The new funding will be used to accelerate growth in the UK and potentially overseas. Wahanda operates a vertical social network and marketplace for spas and wellness services, combining a large spa directory with time-limited daily offers. The company says it has built the world’s biggest vertical database of health and beauty spas, listing 10,000 venues globally, including 4,600 in the UK. Wahanda has positioned itself to be the “Amazon of wellness” and uses group-buying mechanics similar to Groupon to drive transactions. The site soft‑launched in the U.S. in October 2009 as it expands beyond its initial markets. The article notes the global spa economy is worth an estimated $60 billion, framing the market opportunity. Wahanda’s main competitor mentioned is U.S.-based SpaFinder, which has just over 6,000 listings.

Participated · Equity · Jul 2013

ChemistDirect is an online pharmacy and health service led by CEO Stuart Rowe that offers prescription medicines alongside over-the-counter medicines and a wide range of health and beauty products. The company’s website, chemistdirect.co.uk, lists more than 20,000 health and beauty items, including vitamins, supplements, family planning and sexual wellbeing products, perfumes, toiletries, electrical items and baby care. ChemistDirect combines pharmacy services with a broad ecommerce assortment to serve consumer healthcare needs online. The business is based in Oldbury, U.K., and emphasizes both prescription and non-prescription product categories. Financially, the company completed a fundraising round in which it raised just under $10m, increasing its capital base. The round included participation from existing and new investors as reported in the article.