London-based Fresha, a SaaS-enabled marketplace platform for the beauty & wellness industry, has raised $100M (approx €82.45M) in its Series C round of funding. With this fundraise, the company has raised a total of $132M (approx €108.8M) in funding, to date.
The raised capital will help Fresha to further expand its global community of partner salons and spas, scale product development, deepen its marketplace bookings, and pursue strategic M&A.
Investors in this round
Fresha’s Series C round was led by General Atlantic, a global growth equity firm. Besides, the round also saw participation from Huda Kattan of HB Investments and the founder of Huda Beauty; Michael Zeisser of FMZ Ventures, former Chairman Investments at Alibaba Group; and Jonathan Green of Lugard Road Capital.
In addition, Fresha’s existing global investors including Partech, Target Global, and FJ Labs also invested in the round.
Philippe Collombel, General Partner at Partech, mentions, “William and Nick superbly steered Fresha during the COVID-19 pandemic. They have continued to innovate, accelerate signups of new salons, and boost revenues, whilst supporting new venues and small businesses in navigating the crisis.”
Beauty and wellness appointment booking marketplace
Launched in 2015 originally under the name Shedul, the company rebranded to Fresha in 2020.
Founded by Nick Miller and William Zeqiri, Fresha allows consumers to discover, book, and pay for beauty and wellness appointments with local businesses via its marketplace. Similarly, salons, spas, and barbershops use Fresha’s platform to manage their operations with its subscription-free business software.
For businesses, the platform provides facilities such as acceptance of online appointment bookings, processing of card payments, and management of customer records. Besides, it also helps businesses with marketing, staffing, product inventory, and accounting, all in one place.
In addition to its free offering, Fresha Plus provides partners with additional advanced features; rather than a traditional subscription model, the company collects fees on the usage of features for card payment processing and online bookings. The platform is available in 20 local languages.
Fresha’s team currently has over 100 software developers across Europe and UK at its sites in London, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Warsaw. And it is currently hiring to double the headcount of its product development team.
Recent growth
Fresha’s largest market is the UK, however, the company has active users across all of Europe as they don’t restrict geo availability. According to the company, it is establishing a commercial presence in Paris to meet growing demand across the EU.
The platform has about 50,000 partner venues primarily spanning the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe. It claims to have added 4,000 new venues in the month of April 2021 alone. Currently, Fresha is used in 120 countries globally, and each month, customers book millions of appointments on the platform, processing nearly $12B in value to date.
Fresha Founder & CEO William Zeqiri says, “The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the transition across the globe to online bookings and integrated card payments, now seen as essential to run any modern salon or spa. In May 2021, Fresha saw a thirty-fold increase in the volume of card payments processed on the platform compared to a year earlier.”
