Fresha raises over $52 million in Series C round

Fresha, a leading platform for beauty and wellness, has announced over $52 million in additional investment extending the company’s recent $100 million Series C round led by General Atlantic, a leading global growth equity firm, to over $152 million and valuing the company at over $640 million. The extension investment was led by Michael Lahyani and BECO Capital, and also included new contributions from Fresha’s existing investors General Atlantic, Partech, Target Global and FMZ Ventures. The company has raised $182M in investment to date, and will put the new capital to use by further expanding its global community of partner salons and spas, with the goal of accelerating product development and driving marketplace bookings.

The platform provides customers with the ability to discover, book and pay for beauty and wellness appointments with local businesses via its marketplace, while simultaneously offering salons, spas, barbershops and beauty professionals an all-in-one platform to manage their entire operations with its intuitive free business software and financial technology solutions. Fresha’s digital ecosystem gives merchants everything they need to run their business efficiently and seamlessly by facilitating appointment bookings, point-of-sale, customer records management, marketing automation, loyalty, beauty products inventory and team management.

Fresha has provided the beauty and wellness industry with a unique model of providing free business software. This approach has helped to eliminate the friction for small business owners to join the digital revolution en masse and to engage and transact with their clients online. Fresha has seen unprecedented growth since the COVID-19 pandemic as businesses looked to bring their operations online and maximise their revenues by acquiring new customers through the platform’s consumer marketplace.

In 2021, the software as a service (SaaS) market is estimated to be worth approximately 145.5 billion U.S. dollars

Fresha’s product-led strategy has enabled it to become one of the market leaders in the industry, growing its merchant base primarily through word-of-mouth. Fresha has amassed an extensive base of approximately 60,000 merchant venues, primarily located in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and Europe.
The platform is used in 120 countries (including South Africa) globally and each month, customers book tens of millions of appointments on the platform, processing over $15 billion in gross merchandise volume to date.

“We believe that professionals like barbers, stylists and therapists should be able to focus on their craft without having to worry about the daily hassles of running their businesses,” said Fresha Co-Founder and Chief of Product Nick Miller. “We’re committed to providing the very best product with a seamless customer experience at the lowest price point.”

“Our ecosystem proposition differs from the more traditional incumbent software-as-a-service (SaaS) providers that focus on a single offering,” said Fresha Founder and CEO William Zeqiri. “Business owners once had to utilise fragmented tools that attempt to solve operational challenges piecemeal; a business might use MailChimp for marketing, Wix for their website, Shopify to sell beauty products online, Square for payment processing, and other tools for calendar management and marketing. Our mission is to be the go-to one-stop-shop solution that addresses each and every pain point for the industry holistically, with an overarching vision to help connect the world to beauty and wellness.”

This unique approach is what excites Fresha’s investors and continues to drive investment in the platform. “Fresha has positioned itself as a major player in the beauty and wellness industry with a large and loyal customer base,” said Aaron Goldman, Global Co-Head of Financial Services and Managing Director at General Atlantic, in a statement. “We strongly believe in Fresha’s balanced strategy of providing one of the best products in the market at no cost to salons and then driving monetisation via payments and value-added services.”

Fresha is available for download on the App Store and Google Play.

Read more: Wellness app Strove raises R4 million in seed funding

Read more: Cape healthtech iNNOHEALTH raises seven-figure seed capital

Featured image: Fresha