Edinburgh-based ePOS Hybrid has raised almost £750,000 in a second seed funding round.
The firm was founded by serial entrepreneur Bhas Kalangi, who said: “We’ve attracted a lot of institutional investors who are looking to engage in negotiations, despite the round being closed.
“The money raised will help us pave the way for a period of aggressive growth across our customer base, our revenues and also across our product innovation.”
A total of 329 backers joined the latest round, bringing in £634,652 through the Crowdcube platform, with a further £100,000 coming from an angel investor.
Andrew Gibbon, the firm’s head of growth, said “We were able to innovate and thrive throughout the pandemic, despite the hospitality industry grinding to a halt.
“Outlets are still trying to recover from the effects of Covid, but now face skyrocketing operational costs and staff shortages - a huge challenge is the dependence on third-party delivery platforms, who charge up to 35% commission - for many that is unsustainable.
“We’ve made it easy and affordable for restaurants and takeaways to roll out the kind of online presence, digital ordering, tracking, and simple payment systems that are associated with the biggest players.
“We estimate our customers have saved at least £2.1m that would otherwise have been paid in third party commissions,” he added.
The tech company has created a single platform which brings together products including payments, digital ordering and operations management to create a centralised hub for food and drink businesses.
The automated onboarding process also means any business can deploy the system to start taking orders within hours, without any special skills.
The company is planning to launch a new enterprise version of the system - currently designed for single locations - which is focused on delivering big data and streamlining operations for large hospitality groups across the UK.
It has also spent the first half of 2022 trialling services in India, with plans for a launch on the sub-continent’s largely untapped market, where there are fewer competitors.
Kalangi added: “In two years we’ve gone from being in 221 locations to almost 1,000 and we’ve also seen the value of transactions we process increase 20-fold in the UK, from £4.7m to almost £100m.
“With an ever-growing team and the next wave of innovation we have under development, we are perfectly positioned to grow globally, taking a bigger share of a worldwide hospitality and food service market that is worth £4.2trn.”
Don't miss the latest headlines with our twice-daily newsletter - sign up here for free.
