Glasgow tech start-up raises £2 m to help small local sellers take on the big boys

Swipii, the Glasgow-based loyalty and marketing resource for small businesses has recently raised $2.5 million through new investor funding.

The new funding allows Swipii to continue with its accelerated growth plans of “empowering thousands of small businesses across the UK”, by expanding from its current base of merchants to a projected 4500 merchants in 2017.

The company, co-founded by Chitresh Sharma and Louis Schena in 2014 and now operating from two offices in Glasgow and London, has set the target as it seeks to help more small brick and mortar retail businesses take on the high street giants.

Mr Sharma, CEO and co-founder of Swipii, said “Swipii works with a large number of businesses, including barber shops, beauty salons and coffee shops and often they suffer from poor levels of customer data collection due to a lack of time and resources, which leads to the second problem of no follow up communication to help increase repeat visits and drive customer loyalty.

“Our vision is for Swipii to become the Salesforce.com of hyperlocal retail. We want to give the power of systems such as Tesco’s Clubcard to small and medium sized retail businesses at a price that delivers a better ROI and significantly increases revenue for their business.”

Swipii’s own data backs up the importance of customer loyalty, with customer visits increasing by as much as 44 per cent when a loyalty programme is present, and 80 per cent of a company’s revenue coming from 20 per cent of its loyal customers.

Recently, Swipii announced a key strategic contract with Cordia, Scotland’s largest provider of catering services, to encourage and reward school pupils to eat healthier options at lunchtime. Now after a 3-month pilot scheme at a secondary school in the Southside of Glasgow, all 30 secondary schools in Glasgow have Swipii on their premises.

Louis Schena, COO and co-founder of Swipii, said: “We are all really excited to be launching Swipii across schools in Glasgow and delighted to be working alongside Cordia on this project. They are a great example of a catering provider showing innovation and keeping up to date with relevant technologies.”

Swipii are currently in discussions to install their platform at 200 additional schools, aiming to help solve the huge problem of unhealthy eating and obesity in school children.

The Royal Society For Public Health’s recent study found that “…78 per cent of young people believe that a loyalty card that gives points for healthy food choices should be made available”.

The company is now looking to penetrate even more of the 25,000 secondary schools across the UK.

With additional partnerships with six Universities across the UK – the latest being Newcastle University – Swipii’s current user base of 410,000 is expected to continue it’s rapid growth towards 2,000,000 within the next 12 months.

To meet objectives, it has recently grown staff numbers from 7 to 43, adding some key roles in sales, marketing, product development and support.