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A delivery company that takes the Deliveroo model beyond the food realm has raised £20m to expand its London operation.
Home delivery seems to be a bigger deal than ever before, with the internet adding to the layers, rather than cutting out the filters between buyer and seller.
While new retail websites appear by the second, getting products from non-traditional storerooms into the hands of the consumer is becoming convoluted.
Amazon, for example, is working on drones to deliver products, while supermarkets have been dropping food to people’s doors for decades.
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We are now in the digital-courier age. One example is Deliveroo, which delivers restaurant food to your door, without making or owning any of the produce.
However, this is somewhat limited in comparison to Quiqup, which delivers more. In fact, it delivers anything. It is basically a standard courier, serviced over an app.
Today (24 May), it revealed a successful series B funding round, with £20m going towards the company’s technical team, and its expansion throughout the country beyond London, according to Business Insider.
Elsewhere in Europe, doctor appointment planning company DocPlanner has raised £11.6m.
The funding will help to build the company’s international expansion in Latin America, following its merger with Spanish rival Doctoralia.
According to Reuters, DocPlanner employs 300 people and says it is making 340,000 appointments per month in its six core markets of Poland, Spain, Italy, Turkey, Portugal and Mexico.
Fintech intellect
Blispay, a fintech start-up with an interesting take on payments, has raised $12m, for the second time in two years.
The company works with retail businesses to help customers defer payments for products for several months.
It’s not the only company working in this space but, by targeting SMEs, it’s trying to build a gap within which it can operate.
Blispay makes money when people fail to pay for items six months later, which is when significant interest rates kick in. If you pay up in the allotted time, there’s no interest.
Elsewhere, Coins.ph, a Philippines start-up that is looking to capitalise on the vast numbers of unbanked people in the country, has raised $5m from Naspers.
“Coins has done an excellent job of providing consumers with easy, cost-effective access to core financial services,” said James Caviness, VP and CPO of Naspers’ PayU business. “We expect Coins to continue to grow and expand across south-east Asia.”
