London retail SaaS firm Yoobic raises $25m to help fund US expansion

YOOBIC, the London-based SaaS firm whose platform provides real-time monitoring of retail operations, is announcing $25m (£18.8m) of new funding.

The round was led by Insight Venture Partners, a New York-based venture capital and private equity firm.

Felix Capital, the London-based venture firm who led YOOBIC’s Series A in November 2016, also participated.

The investment will fund the company’s growth plans, with 100 new employees brought on board in London, Paris, New York and Tel Aviv within the next year, strengthening its sales and marketing, project management, R&D and product development teams.

The funding will also be used to finance the development of new product capabilities, and expansion into the US, with a New York office opening in September of this year.

Headquartered in London and founded in 2014, YOOBIC is a mobile-first solution that helps retailers improve in-store operations and simplify communication between HQ and stores.

YOOBIC is used by more than 100 retailers across the world. The solution is used in more than 200,00 stores in 44 countries.

Fabrice Haïat, CEO and co-founder of YOOBIC, commented: “YOOBIC is growing very quickly. We had revenue growth of 143% from 2016 to 2017. We’ve doubled the size of our team in the last 12 months and we now have 100 employees.

“We are the leading retail operations solution in Europe. Each month, more than 100,000 tasks are performed by our clients in our application.

“Opening a new office in New York in September is a milestone in our international expansion. Our priority is to continue improving our solution to help our clients provide their customers with an excellent shopping experience in every store, while making them more profitable.”

Fabrice added: “The digitisation of the store is a priority for every retailer, alongside streamlining internal operational processes and communications to make them more efficient. This benefits the entire organisation as it helps store teams save time by making their day-to-day job easier and decreases operational costs.

“Customers have higher expectations than ever before and that makes managing stores more challenging. By placing the human at the centre of our product development process, we provide each store associate with a user-friendly and easy-to-use mobile application to manage daily tasks.”

Jeff Lieberman, managing director of Insight Venture Partners, said: “The YOOBIC team has created a best-in-class product offering and we are looking forward to working on the company’s future and expansion in the US. We believe solutions like this will become a must-have for retailers, and that YOOBIC has the opportunity and the potential to become the leader of its category.”

Frédéric Court, founder and managing partner of Felix Capital, also commented: “YOOBIC has experienced tremendous growth and we’re delighted to continue our partnership with the company to accelerate its global expansion.”

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