- Retail technology company NearSt announced it has raised £2 million in seed funding to drive more foot traffic into retail stores
Retail technology company NearSt announced it has raised £2 million in seed funding to drive more foot traffic into retail stores and advance its global offerings. The £2 million round was led by YYX Capital for encouraging consumers to return to “the high street.”
Will Hobhouse and Ben Laurie participated in the round along with senior engineers from AI firm DeepMind. Launched in 2015 by Max Krejin and Nick Brackenbury, NearSt has developed technology that connects products on in real-time to local customers searching on Google.
“Most of the products we buy online are stocked in a store nearby. Until today though, they were invisible to your smartphone, so online was the only easy option,” said Brackenbury. We’re solving that problem for retailers by making it effortless to get their products seen by the millions of local searches happening every day near their stores.”
With this round of funding, the company is planning to hire more talent and launch its offering in the US.
“Many people presume e-commerce signals the death knell for the high street, but over 90% of all purchases still happen in-store globally,” added YYX Capital founding partner James Cox. “This is a multi-trillion dollar market that technology has barely touched, and NearSt has the potential to truly transform how we all interact with physical retail.”
