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Royal Mail leads 2.5 million funding in Mallzee

By Angela Gonzalez-Rodriguez

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Personalised shopping app designed by the UK start-up Mallzee has raised new funding. The investment round has been led by the Royal Mail and consecrates nowadays’ shift at postal deliveries from letters to parcels. Total amount raised was up to 2.5 million pounds.

Other new and existing investors include the Scottish Investment Bank, Par Equity, and individual investors Gareth Williams (Skyscanner), Rob Dobson (Actix), and Chris Van Der Kuyl and Paddy Burns (4j Studios, the makers of Minecraft console).

The company has raised a total of 3.1 million pounds since being founded in 2013.

The investment in Mallzee also “provides Royal Mail with exposure to new, high-growth revenue streams further up the value chain,” Royal Mail said in a press release. A Royal Mail representative will sit on Mallzee’s board. “Doing day-to-day business with Mallzee helps bring us expertise in a fast-growing sector,” said a spokeswoman for the mailing company.

In turn, Mallzee will get access to Royal Mail’s address book of retailers that use its delivery services. “We will work together to get more retailers to join our platform,” Mallzee CEO Cally Russell said in a phone interview. The company says more than 100 retailers display their products on its app. Once they make a purchase on the app, consumers are redirected to the retailer’s website.

Available for Android and iOS, Mallzee lets you browse (and ultimately purchase) fashion items from over 100 retailers via its swipe interface. Based on shoppers’ preferences and choices, the app creates what the start-up describes as unique personalised style profiles that makes finding “the perfect outfit” quick and easy. This includes sending you alerts when items you have swiped-to-like are reduced in price.

Parcel revenue rose by 2 percent and volumes shipped in the UK by 3 percent in the past quarter, the company said Tuesday Royal Mail. Additionally, the postal service in the UK added that mobile-shopping apps now generate a‎ growing share of parcel sending.

As reported by the ‘Wall Street Journal’, an online survey conducted in April revealed that 24 percent of UK respondents used a cellphone to shop and another 24 percent used a tablet, up from 22 percent and 19 percent, respectively, a year earlier.

Mallzee