Ubamarket has announced the completion of an oversubscribed £800k investment as part of a £2.9 million raise. The investment will be used to develop it’s white label retail app, Ubamarket as well as its new solution for the hospitality sector, New Order Magic Menu (NOMM).
Ubamarket was founded in 2016 by Will Broome to improve the supermarket shopping experience. His frustration at trying to find items on his list on the aisles in an efficient way made him think there must be a better way:
“From aisle one to aisle seven, aisle three to aisle nine and then back to aisle one again because, it turns out, the seventeenth thing on my list is located right next to the first thing on my list (who knew?), my hapless journey continued. Wouldn’t it be cool if you walked in and your list was magically in the right order, I thought to myself. And Ubamarket was conceived. Right there on aisle nine.”
Through partnerships with SPAR and Co-Op, the app was developed with investment from private equity firm IW Capital. Ubamarket claims the benefits for retailers of its solution include:
- Increased basket sizes;
- Greater customer loyalty;
- Personalised offers for shoppers;
- Collection of behavioural data;
- Integration with loyalty schemes.
NOMM is an evolution of this technology for the hospitality sector and is the first app to offer contactless payment, interactive menus, facial recognition, takeaways and deliveries. Benefits for food outlets include an API cloud-based software that is linked to the POS system, meaning that any changes made to the menus in the restaurant are updated to the app in real time.
Luke David, CEO of IW Capital believes the current environment is ripe for such technology:
“While some investors have treaded with caution as a result of Covid-19, we believe that now is exactly the right time to be investing into innovative businesses. This is especially true of those which offer tangible products which industries such as hospitality are desperately in need of once they open up again this summer.”