Home entertainment and hospitality platform, HOMETAINMENT, has announced it has raised nearly £400,000 (£390,000) in funding through a crowdfunding campaign and is set to scale in London and abroad.

Roleshare, creator of a unique job sharing marketplace and management platform, has announced a $1.2 million seed round from a notable slate of investors.

Since establishing in 2002 Invest NI has provided 66,000 offers of support to almost 15,000 businesses, and helped to create 125,000 jobs, with over two thirds of these outside Belfast.

Acknowledging the milestone, Mel Chittock, Invest NI Interim CEO, said: “Our core role has always been to grow the Northern Ireland economy. This has stayed at the forefront of all we have done in the past 20 years.

The British Business Bank thas announced new ENABLE Funding facility to Propel, one of the UK’s largest and fastest growing independent asset finance providers. The new facility will allow Propel to provide around £165m of finance to smaller businesses across the UK.

 Nick Lyth, Founder and President of Green Angel Syndicate comments...

A newly launched series of business support tailored to the needs of aspiring female entrepreneurs has been launched by MENTA Business Support across Norfolk and Suffolk

2021 was a record year for investment for businesses at every stage of funding, from those going for the first round of funding to those seeking much later stage investments. The year closed out with $643 billion having been invested by venture capitals (VCs) across the globe, marking a year-on-year growth rate of 92%. Whilst it’s true that in 2022, funding slowed slightly in comparison, funding for the second quarter of 2022 still exceeded funding for every quarter in 2020.

DrinkWell, the low-calorie alcohol retailer, has secured £1M investment from a private investor to fuel its ambitious expansion plans.  The funding will enable the Manchester-based eCommerce retailer to scale, growing its team, while investing in product development including the launch of two new brands, Lean Brew IPA and Traces Wine. In addition, DrinkWell has plans to add several new features to its retail business, expand into the European market and invest in marketing to further build its brand, plus drive recruitment, creating jobs across various areas of the business.

Occupational therapist Martina Tierney from Limavady has been named the Catalyst Impact Award Winner 2022 for her exceptional work with Seating Matters, designing therapeutic chairs to meet the wide-ranging needs of patients with disabilities.

Online recruitment platform Smart Recruit Online is planning to double in size after raising a further £2m in investment from the MEIF.

Insolvency figures released for July 2022* by the UK Government’s Insolvency Service showed corporate insolvencies at 1,827, up 67% compared to the same month last year (1,827 in July 2022 and 1096 in July 2021).

Live and social shopping SaaS solution provider LiSA has raised €2.7 million investment in a seed round led by TechVision Fonds (TVF). The investment will help to both accelerate the growth of its social commerce SaaS business and make frictionless, cross-platform social commerce a reality through its headless solutions and API-based partner ecosystem. 

The German startup, which participated in Brent Hoberman’s Founders Factory accelerator program in 2019, also received funding from the UK’s VC Venrex and angel investor Georgie Smallwood, part of Accel’s first cohort of Scouts and chief product officer at micro mobility startup Tier.