This new mobile app for millennials has secured £2.4m to increase business

Hoop, a family app aimed at younger parents, has secured £2.4m of funding to help grow the business across the UK and focus on its revenue.

Launched in 2016, the company was founded due to the lack of ‘comprehensive information on children’s events, classes and activities’, where parents and carers would have to look out for council websites, noticeboards, posters… in public places like libraries and shops.

This app helps to discover things families generally enjoy doing; through personalised lists of events and classes, Hoop identifies activities best suited for children based on their age, location and interests.

Daniel Bower, co-founder of Hoop, commented: “Parents want to find interesting, fun and affordable things their kids will love to do. Until now it’s been easy to miss great things happening locally because there’s no easy way to uncover new events and activities.

“Hoop solves this problem. We believe that the influence of smartphones on modern families is going to increase significantly in the next few years as more millennials become parents for the first time.

“They have grown up using Deliveroo and WhatsApp to organise their lives, and want to manage their family time in the same way, expecting information to be accessible at a moment’s notice.”

BFG Ventures, a UK-focused fund, is the lead investor of this company. Hoop has expanded this year to cover the whole of Britain, and now lists more than 50k different activities each month. With 600k parents using the app, businesses that run activities for children have a digital platform to reach new customers.

Hoop taps into the multi-billion pound market for such family entertainment and was founded by VoucherCodes’ entrepreneurs.

Supposedly, the average age of a first time mum in the UK now is just over 30, and since these parents are older they sometimes have more money to spend on such activities.

Harry Briggs, partner at BGF Ventures, also commented: “Hoop are one of those rare teams who not only have the talent and focus to build a revolutionary product, but also are on a mission to make family time more rewarding on a global scale.”

This summer, Hoop introduced its organiser platform which allows activity providers to manage their presence and take bookings on its app. More than 4,000 families have signed up so far. Hoop takes a 10 per cent commission for all bookings made through the app.

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