Fresha, a beauty and wellness software platform, has secured USD100 million in a Series C investment round led by General Atlantic, a global growth equity firm, with strategic participation from Huda Kattan of HB Investments and the founder of Huda Beauty, as well as Michael Zeisser of FMZ Ventures, former Chairman Investments at Alibaba Group, and Jonathan Green of Lugard Road Capital.
Fresha’s existing global investors Partech, Target Global and FJ Labs also participated in the round, bringing the company’s total fundraising to USD132 million to date. Fresha will leverage the new funds to further broaden its global community of partner salons and spas, scale product development, deepen its marketplace bookings and pursue strategic M&A.
Fresha allows consumers to discover, book and pay for beauty and wellness appointments with local businesses via its marketplace, while salons, spas and barbershops can leverage Fresha to manage their operations with its intuitive, subscription-free business software. The Fresha platform removes the critical pain points that service-based businesses often encounter by seamlessly facilitating the acceptance of online appointment bookings, processing of card payments and management of customer records, along with automations for marketing, staffing, product inventory and accounting, all in one place. In addition to its free offering, Fresha Plus provides partners with additional advanced features; rather than a traditional subscription model, the company collects fees on the usage of features for card payment processing and online bookings.
Fresha has amassed an extensive base of approximately 50,000 partner venues primarily spanning the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Europe. In April 2021 alone, the company added over 4,000 new venues. The Fresha platform is used in 120 countries globally, and each month, customers book tens of millions of appointments on the platform, processing nearly $12 billion in value to date. Fresha’s focus on building easy-to-use, free software and offering business tools without any subscription fees, underpinned by a strong word-of-mouth effect, has helped the company build a loyal following and customer base. Fresha’s partner businesses rely on the platform for its ease of use, time-saving benefits and embedded features to grow sales, while end consumers enjoy a premium booking and payment experience.
Read more/Source: Private Equity Wire
