Open commerce platform RedCloud seeks £100m to ease supply chain crisis

Sep 08, 2021

A British technology company behind a new platform to improve the efficiency of global supply chains is raising tens of millions of pounds to facilitate a rapid expansion amid pandemic-induced disruption to multinationals’ operations.

Sky News understands that RedCloud Technology is in detailed talks with investors about raising up to £100m of new funding.

The company is the brainchild of Justin Floyd, a serial tech entrepreneur who has backed companies including Cambridge Medical Robotics and Omnisense, a provider remote monitoring solutions.

RedCloud has developed an “open commerce” platform which enables brand manufacturers, distributors and merchants to trade digitally.

Among the services it provides is access to digitised payments, eliminating the risks associated with cash handling, while offering real-time data about inventory management.

It also operates an app, Red101, which is designed for use by small, local merchants.

The company’s fundraising, which is said to have attracted the attention a number of blue-chip prospective backers, comes as the supply chains of consumer goods companies have been ravaged by the COVID-19 crisis and troubles in the global shipping industry.

RedCloud believes its platform can help users reach as many as five billion consumers globally and that it can assist one billion “micro-merchants” around the world to digitise their supply chains.

“Today’s business-to-business commerce is slow, fragmented, and expensive, built on decades-old infrastructure and processes, costing brands and sellers billions in lost revenue and market share,” Mr Floyd said.

He added that up to $19tn of non-digital payments were adding to lost trade, while $1tn annually of sales were lost through out-of-stock inventory in store.

A projected rise in the number of middle-income consumers globally from 1.5 billion this year to five billion in 2025 made the improved efficiency of supply chains increasingly time-critical, Mr Floyd said.

Earlier this week, the boss of one of the world’s biggest port and terminal operators told the Financial Times that a slowdown in consumer demand was the only way to resolve the current supply chain crisis.

Meanwhile, the CBI, Britain’s largest employers’ group, has warned that labour shortages could last for as long as two years.

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RedCloud has previously drawn backing from the British Business Bank, which invests in substantial numbers of technology companies that are “scaling up”.

It has so far signed more than 100 brands to its platform, while it says more than 250,000 merchants have downloaded its app.

The company’s fundraising is expected to be completed later this year.

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