CoachHub raises $80M in Series “B2” round, as coaching goes digital in the pandemic

The world of professional coaching has grown over the years as coaches realised they could easily counsel people remotely and clients realized digital coaching was far more efficient. But, equally, a problem arose in how to sift the wheat from the chaff. At the same time corporates realised that their own staff could benefit – but faced the same sifting problem. In a classic Internet play, CoachHub came along three years ago and applied AI to a marketplace to do the sifting. All well and good, but with training and personal development going almost completely digital due to the pandemic, the market has exploded.

Berlin-based CoachHub has now raised $80m in a Series “B2” funding, increasing its total Series B capital to $110m. Investors Draper Esprit, RTP Global, HV Capital, Signals Venture Capital, Partech, and Speedinvest all participated bringing the total funds raised to $130m, since 2019.

Last year it raised a $30 million Series B round, also led by Draper Esprit, alongside existing investors HV Capital, Partech, Speedinvest, signals Venture Capital, and RTP Global.

The startup competes with other aggregators such as AceUp out of Boston, which has raised $2.3M.
 
The three year old startup says it has tripled its employees, and added new clients including Fujitsu, Electrolux, Babbel, ViacomCBS and KPMG.
 
Co-founder and Chief Sales Director Yannis Niebelschütz said in a statement: “This latest round of funding will allow us to meet the ever-growing demand for digital solutions for training and personal development, which has been triggered by the pandemic.”
 
Christoph Hornung, investment director at Draper Esprit said: “It’s no longer just about the pandemic. What we are increasingly seeing with digital-first, highly enriched platforms such as CoachHub are more dynamic and – crucially – more accessible tools to transform companies through training and education.”
 
CoachHub says it uses AI to match individuals with 2,500 business and well-being coaches in 70 countries across six continents. Coaching sessions are available in 60+ languages.

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Samsung Galaxy A52s 5G launched in India

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Trustshare runs escrow infrastructure as a service to facilitate online sales

Meet Trustshare, a London-based startup that is working on escrow infrastructure for online classified, B2B marketplaces, trade directories and more. It’s a white-label platform that can be integrated with online marketplaces in just a few lines of code.

If you’ve ever tried to sell something expensive on the web, you know that it’s hard to know for sure that you’re not getting scammed. For instance, that person that is trying to buy your old phone from you — should you send the phone first or ask the buyer to send the money first?

If a marketplace relies on Trustshare for payments, buyers first have to checkout and leave money into a dedicated transaction-based account. Trustshare can also handle identity verification steps, such as KYC and AML checks (Know Your Customer and Anti-Money Laundering). The seller can check the status of the funds. Once the buyer has received the product, they can release funds to the seller.

Behind the scenes, Trustshare generates a dedicated IBAN per transaction. Customers can deposit money using bank transfers or cards. In the U.K. and Europe, Trustshare takes advantage of open banking regulation so that users can connect to their bank account from the checkout flow.

If you don’t want to tweak your site’s code, you can also use Trustshare for offline sales and transactions that happen over email or messaging apps. The company lets you generate QR codes or payment links to initiate a payment.

The startup has raised an angel round from several business angels, such as Cazoo and Zoopla founder Alex Chesterman and Carwow founder James Hind. After that, Trustshare raised a $3.2 million seed round (£2.3 million) led by Nauta Capital.

Many companies could leverage Trustshare to launch their own marketplace as escrow payment is one of the biggest pain points. For instance, you can imagine luxury brands launching their own marketplaces of handbags and watches, new car marketplaces focused on one type of cars in particular, etc.

“Our 5 lines of code branded escrow checkout is taking many marketplaces, brands that consumers know and trust, transactional. Really, this is just the start. Our borderless escrow infrastructure is incredibly powerful, and we plan to launch new products including instant pay-throughs, baskets and projects to make payments as quick and easy as sending an email,” co-founder and CEO Nick Fulton said in a statement.

Trustshare is built on top of existing payment infrastructure. That’s why it supports 180 countries and 30 currencies already. The company’s initial clients include Watchcollecting, Bookabuilder and U.K. trade body FENSA’s Deposit Protection service.

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