British firm Huboo raises £60 mn backed by strong growth

08
Oct '21

Pic: Huboo

Huboo, a British fulfillment services provider to e-commerce companies, has raised £60 million ($82 million) in investment following the close of Series B funding led by Emirati-based powerhouse Mubadala. The funding comes on the back of Huboo’s exponential growth driven in part by a step change in e-commerce penetration over the past two years.

The investment will help propel the company’s expansion across continental Europe, having already opened its first mainland European base in Eindhoven, Netherlands and soon it will be opening its first Spanish fulfillment centre in Madrid.

“Scores of new and existing retail businesses now see their future in e-commerce, but while anyone can set up an online store-front and start selling within hours, the infrastructure powering e-commerce is alarmingly outdated, inefficient, inflexible and expensive,” Martin Bysh, CEO and co-founder, said in a press release. “This is the problem we’ve set out to address with our hub model, which brings flexibility and affordability to the incredibly complex fulfillment piece so that online retailers of all sizes – from part-timers to fast-growth D2C leaders – can benefit.”

“We’re thrilled to have Mubadala on-board and are looking forward to developing our plans. This raise enables us to roll out our proposition on a wider international scale, as well as expand our service offering, continue our software development and further invest in our growing team. By taking care of the complexity of fulfillment, our goal is to enable seamless, borderless trade for e-commerce businesses of all sizes,” Bysh continued.

“Huboo’s product solves one of the most critical pain points for e-commerce companies – while order fulfillment is a core function for these companies, it is not part of their core competency. By combining logistics with a user-friendly software platform, Huboo delivers a superior fulfillment experience and allows businesses of all sizes to continue focusing on core activities such as product development, while managing growing demand from their customers,” Fatou Bintou Sagnang, partner at Mubadala Capital Ventures said.

“Episode 1 is delighted to continue to back Bysh and Paul Dodd. Having led their first round of funding in April 2019, we’ve been blown away by the growth and the speed of execution and are looking forward to working with the new investors to support the team as they build a category defining company,” Damien Lane, co-founder and partner at Episode 1, said.

“Huboo is a shining light of UK tech, and we’re particularly delighted for a Bristol-based company to be succeeding this way! Bysh and Dodd’s incredible vision is becoming a global reality at supersonic speed. Their innovative approach to fulfillment logistics is powered by their proprietary technology, which has led to happy employees and happy customers – no mean feat! Ada Ventures is so proud of them and their team and we’re thrilled that this is a company we’ve backed right from the start, all the way to this growth round where we also invested a large SPV,” Matt Penneycard, founding partner at Ada Ventures, said in the release.

“Huboo does the seemingly impossible – to deliver high-precision e-commerce fulfillment cost effectively to businesses of all sizes and levels of complexity. Huboo innovates both in how it looks at logistics, as an interlocked set of lego blocks connected by software, and how it looks at people, as a team of empowered self-starters obsessed about customer success. It’s a start-up worth backing and that is why we are doubling down,” Fred Destin, founder at Stride.VC, said.

Fibre2Fashion News Desk (JL)

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