Tech firm Licklist widens its market ahead of £1.75m funding round as part of the PWC Raise Programme
Social Platform Licklist is widening its market with the rebrand of its b2b arm to Booked it ahead of a £1.75m funding round. Licklist was founded in 2015 with a focus on the nightlife industry, providing solutions for organising a night out. The platform has over 600,000 users, annual gross sales over £6m and 6000 nightlife venues listed on its app.
Licklist rebranded its Licklist for Business b2b arm to Booked it in October 2020, enabling the London based tech firm to better serve the wider hospitality market.
The change comes in response to evolving market conditions during the coronavirus pandemic which has seen Licklist work with hospitality and leisure venues in the UK to introduce mobile ordering technology. Over 500 hospitality venues in the UK are now using Licklist mobile ordering tech.
Licklist is part of the PWC Raise Programme and is heading for £1.75m Series A funding in 2021 as part of a pitch day with 60 plus investors. This follows Licklist’s successful seed rounds in November 2016 and January 2020. The Series A funding will be the first venture capital funding for the business.
The PWC Programme prepares scale up businesses to secure their Series A funding. Requirements for the programme include a strong management team, UK presence, £1m upwards of annual revenue and defensible differentiation. Licklist secured £103,288 Seedrs funding in November 2016 and £140,727 through an Angels Den funding round in January 2020.
Brad Nobbs, CEO and co-founder of Licklist commented:
“Licklist was one of 8 successful businesses gaining entry onto the PWC Raise Programme from 1000 businesses screened. We have a sustainable, self-sufficient brand in Licklist. The nightlife industry has been hit hard by the pandemic but our strong brand and culture of innovation has enabled us to adapt.”
We’ve seen massive demand for our mobile ordering tech since the pandemic began. Effectively we’ve widened our market from 6000 nightlife venues to 150,000 hospitality venues. Going forward, and we see the b2b side of the business through Booked it to be a new growth area for us, alongside our respected and profitable consumer focused Licklist brand.”
“In 5 years, we’ve been able to build Licklist some really impressive stats. Photography is a core for Licklist and over 6 million photos have been taken and uploaded onto the platform. As with our previous funding rounds, the Series A funding is purely about growth for us. With the Series A funding, we will continue to drive growth for Licklist and further develop Booked it. Funding will be split evenly across sales, marketing and development.”
“Booked it is positioned to the needs of the larger hospitality industry. We’ve been working with hotels, cafés, pubs, coffee shops, even cricket clubs and golf courses, getting them up to speed with mobile ordering, obtaining data for test and trace, and understanding how to drive loyalty through data.”
“With the necessity for hospitality venues to obtain details of customers for test and trace becoming a legal requirement from the 18th September, and the reality of local lockdowns, our table booking and takeaway ordering technology has been a vital aspect of the preparation process for many businesses. There is still much for us to do to support the hospitality industry.”
“Clubs and bars in the UK remain closed with an anticipated reopening of November 2020. We were fortunate in that we had already developed our mobile ordering tech, so were well placed to pivot our business to focus on the b2b side when the pandemic hit.”
One such business supported by Licklist is Canterbury pub The Unicorn Inn, part of leading UK pub business Ei Group. Lorenzo Carnevale-Maffe, the general manager of The Unicorn Inn said the tech enabled them to re-open and continue to trade:
“The Unicorn Inn is a traditional village pub with beams at the ceiling and craft and real ales on tap. During lockdown, we started to offer takeaway and had a special blend from Hopdaemon Brewery that we called Lockdown Ale. This was really popular on our takeaway menu alongside our Pegasus Beers and pork scratchings.”
“Licklist have helped us with table bookings, integrated into our website, and mobile ordering too. We’ve got a limited food menu and are asking customers to order their food and drinks using the QR code that Licklist set up for us. Our customers have adapted to the changes really well. For a small country pub, table bookings and mobile ordering have helped us get up and running again with the minimum of fuss.”
