Fresha, a London-based SaaS-enabled marketplace platform for the beauty and wellness industry, announced that it has raised an additional $52M (approx €46.1M) in its Series C round of funding.
Earlier in June, Fresha had raised $100M in its Series C round led by global growth equity firm General Atlantic. The company has now raised a total of $182M (approx €161.4M) in funding to date and is currently valued at over $640M (approx €567.7M).
Investors and capital utilisation
The current extension round was led by Michael Lahyani and BECO Capital, and also included new contributions from Fresha’s existing investors General Atlantic, Partech, Target Global, and FMZ Ventures.
The company claims the proceeds from this round will help it to expand its global community of partner salons and spas, to accelerate product development, and drive marketplace bookings.
Fresha’s co-founder and Chief of Product, Nick Miller, says, “We believe that professionals like barbers, stylists, and therapists should be able to focus on their craft without having to worry about the daily hassles of running their businesses. We’re committed to providing the very best product with a seamless customer experience at the lowest price point.”
“Instantly book salons and spas nearby”
Launched in 2015 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 offers facilities like acceptance of online bookings, processing of card payments, and management of customer records. 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. Also, 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.
Zeqiri says, “Our ecosystem proposition differs from the more traditional incumbent software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers that focus on a single offering. Business owners once had to utilise fragmented tools that attempt to solve operational challenges piecemeal; a business might use MailChimp for marketing, Wix for their website, Shopify to sell beauty products online, Square for payment processing, and other tools for calendar management and marketing. Our mission is to be the go-to one-stop-shop solution that addresses each and every pain point for the industry holistically, with an overarching vision to help connect the world to beauty and wellness.”
Recent growth
Fresha claims to have witnessed significant growth since the Covid-19 pandemic as businesses brought their operations online and maximised their revenues by acquiring new customers through the platform’s consumer marketplace.
The company’s largest market is the UK, but 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 60,000 partner venues primarily spanning the US, UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Europe.
Currently, Fresha is used in 120 countries globally, and each month, customers book millions of appointments on the platform processing nearly $15B in gross merchandise volume to date.