Virtualstock, a digital supply chain specialist, has closed a USD6 million investment round with Notion Capital, a European B2B SaaS Venture Capital (VC) firm, to support its next phase of growth.
Virtualstock’s goal is to transform global B2B supply chains and marketplaces through its unique ability to seamlessly and rapidly connect systems together. The business’ core platform (The Edge) is already used by leading retailers including Tesco, John Lewis, Sainsbury’s, Argos and Dixons Carphone to support their digital and omni-channel strategies. The company’s platform brings increased transparency and simplicity to a company’s supply chain meaning customers can take advantage of the ever-increasing opportunities that an omni-channel environment presents.
Virtualstock also recently announced a breakthrough partnership with NHS Shared Business Services to bring The Edge to the NHS to help realise up to GBP1 billion of annual savings through transforming the end-to-end procurement process.
Virtualstock is planning to double its headcount, at its Reading offices, to 100 management and staff in the next 12 months.
Founded in 2009, Notion Capital is Europe’s leading venture capital firm focused on enterprise SaaS and Cloud companies. Notion’s partners are best known for founding and building MessageLabs, one of the world’s largest SaaS exits at its USD700m sale to Symantec in 2008. The firm backs exceptional enterprise software entrepreneurs who have what it takes to transform large, global markets and has made 45 investments to date.
The investment will enable Virtualstock to accelerate its already impressive growth in its core retail and health sectors, and support further expansion into new geographic markets and sectors, establishing the business as a global player enabling its clients to deliver digital supply chain transformation fast.
Andrew Mills, CEO at Virtualstock, says: “We are delighted that Notion Capital has chosen to invest in our business as we believe they are the best possible partners for us. Its team brings unique experience having founded and exited MessageLabs and also has built the “Notion Platform” to support their portfolio businesses through a range of value added services.
“The investment comes at a very exciting time as we continue to grow our market share in retail and are poised to become the de facto catalogue and procure-to-pay solution within the NHS. We will now be in a position to accelerate our growth, enhance our portfolio of solutions and expand into new markets. We look forward to further investment in our clients, staff and supplier base, including creating a further high quality UK tech sector jobs in the M4 ‘silicon corridor’ over the next year.”
Stephen Chandler, Managing Partner at Notion Capital, says: “Digital supply chain is a hot topic, and for good reason. Virtualstock delivers an agile supply chain technology platform that allows its clients to quickly adapt to the challenges of digitisation without turning to traditional systems integration, thereby reducing cost and risk while accelerating benefits. Virtualstock has already demonstrated this in two important sectors and has accumulated an impressive portfolio of clients. They are now superbly placed to scale rapidly and we believe that they will become another UK technology success story.”
