LONDON, September 20, 2016
Reward Cloud has confirmed investment financing from Passion Capital to leverage on the company’s robust business model and to expand its proposition for the vast opportunities within the digital gift card sector.
The Brighton-based company, whose founders Gareth Gillatt and Alex Preece also founded Local Daily Deals which was acquired by MoneySupermarket.com in 2011, has swiftly established itself as a unique and lucrative proposition: a platform for digital gift cards opening up new channels for gift card providers and offering an innovative and efficient service for the reward and recognition market such as employee perks or other incentive programmes.
The gift card sector has been subject to a seismic shift due to digital technology, as co-founder Gillatt explains; ‘A gift card is no longer just a plastic card you pick up at the supermarket checkout to give to your Mum. It’s now a flexible financial tool that can be used across a number of different use cases and industries such as staff rewards, voluntary benefits and customer acquisition or retention.’
The investment from Passion Capital validates Reward Cloud’s vision and operational success, as Robert Dighero, Passion Capital partner and investor director for the company explains, “Given the size of the gift card market, it’s surprising and yet a massive opportunity to provide a platform for real-time and online redemption and processing. The team at Reward Cloud impressed us with their pragmatic and incredibly effective approach and platform delivery. We’re looking forward to partnering with them as they scale the business up and also expand internationally.”
Reward Cloud opens up a world of opportunity to brands, businesses and partners. Integrated directly with all of the major gift card processors, Reward Cloud generates and sends digital gift cards to recipients on demand, instantly. Through one simple API connection, incentive and reward agencies such as corporate HR or consumer products customer service organisations can source on-demand digital gift cards in real-time. No more waiting for a physical delivery, just instant delivery for the purchaser and gratification for the recipient.
Reward Cloud also significantly expands sell-through for brand partners by offering an agile interface that opens up a corporate brand or service to a huge new potential audience as well as the opportunity to enter the highly lucrative B2B sector.
In addition, Reward Cloud’s powerful business intelligence (BI) and analytics suite is populated in real-time with data to better inform stakeholders, offering both brands and partners transparent data and results at the click of a button.
Co-founder Preece summarises, “In integrating with all of the retailers’ gift card processors, we’ve saved brands and partners time, money and man hours. Reward Cloud provides a platform which offers smart real-time tools, and provides simple, easy access to our API with analytics, flash sale promotions and tracking all in one interface.”
About Reward Cloud
Reward Cloud was founded in 2016 by Gareth Gillatt and Alex Preece. The two were also co-founders in an earlier business which had a successful exit to MoneySupermarket.com. They seized on the opportunity to apply their business acumen and proven operational abilities to the gift card market when it became apparent that it was one of the last sub-sectors of retail and commerce to be digitally-enabled. The company is based in Brighton with a staff of 10 people concentrated on development, sales, marketing and customer development.
About Passion Capital
Passion Capital is the pre-eminent seed-stage VC fund based in London. Founded in 2011 by general partners Eileen Burbidge, Robert Dighero and Stefan Glaenzer, the team invests across all sectors of internet and digital technology an innovation. The firm prides itself on backing the most ambitious and capable founders, and operating with transparency, time efficiency and respect for entrepreneurs. It publishes its standard term sheet and full investment documents on its website, yearly infographics with fully transparent fund data and was the first in the world to publish and use a plain English term sheet.
