Google Cloud and Loyal Guru partner to accelerate digital transformation for retailers all over the world.

The Customer Data Platform, Loyal Guru, has partnered with Google Cloud to boost retailers’ and grocers’ customer data and loyalty operations.

As the volume of consumer data continues to exponentially grow across all channels, C-level executives in the retail industry are looking to centralize data and make it available to multi-disciplinary teams, with the goal of seamlessly and securely scaling their operations and driving more efficient business decisions.

Loyal Guru, built on top of Google Cloud, is the one-stop solution where retailers can collect online and offline data, and monetize it through flexible loyalty programs and personalized coupons. With an unbeatable time-to-market the Loyal Guru and Google Cloud’s partnership becomes a state-of-the-art combination to boost any retailer’s operation.

“We truly believe that any retailer can become a customer-centric organisation with the right tools. This partnership will allow us to reach more innovative retailers who are looking for cutting-edge solutions like ours to ultimately drive growth.” - Borja Sanfeliu, Co-Founder & CEO.

Startup funding news 💸

• Madrid and NYC-based SaaS financing startup Capchase was once again in the news. This time they announced a $280m round of equity and debt, led by i80 Group. Capchase made two interesting announcements: the launch of a buy-now-pay-later solution for the B2B segment, and a partnership with Microacquire to offer acquisition financing to SaaS entrepreneurs
• Madrid-based real estate iBuyer Tiko raised $65m from btov, Rocket Internet and Cabiedes & Partners
• Palencia-based Easycharger, developers of an electric vehicle charging solution, raised €25m from undisclosed investors
• Madrid-based insurtech company Asistensi raised $10.2m, from Mundi Ventures, 468 Capital and Nazca
• Madrid-based online therapy company TherapyChat raised €5m, led by Next Chance Group
• Valencia-based SaaS proptech company Qlip raised €3.5m, led by The Lab Venture Funds
• Madrid-based transportation company Meep raised €3m, led by Globalia
• Madrid-based Kaleidos raised €2.2m
• Barcelona-based employee mental health platform Oliva raised $2.2m pre-seed round led by Moonfire Ventures
• Barcelona-based Citibeats raised a bridge round of €2m from international investors to scale their social data platform in LATAM and the US
• Barcelona-based mortgage financing company Finteca raised €750k
• Valencia-based hyperloop developer Zeleros raised funding from Acciona and CAF
• Other rounds of funding: Inhala

M&A activity 🎊

• Burgos-based robotics company ASTI was acquired by Swiss giant ABB. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. According to La Informacion, ASTI had sales of €23m in 2019 and planned to reach $50m this year. The company was founded in 1982 and Veronica Pascual took over the family business a few years ago. Reuters has more details. ASTI makes autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), which can freely move around factory floors at up to 2 metres per second without following pre-installed tracks
• Madrid-based digital marketing firm Mio Group IPO'ed a few weeks ago, reaching a valuation of €30m. Here's an analysis of their business
• Ion lithium battery developer Endurance Motive went public on the BME Growth
• Vocento announced the acquisition of a majority stake in Premium Leads, a lead generation company launched by A Coruña-based IPGlobal
• American group Synthetic Neural Labs acquired neobank bnc10. Bnc10 announced a few weeks ago that it was shutting down
• UK lending company Outfund acquired Barcelona-based competitor Clicfunds

Investor & accelerator news 🚀

• The Spanish government announced plans to invest up to €4b in funds as well as through direct investments
• Javi Lopez, former co-founder of Erasmusu and now a business angel, published a must-read document about what he's learned about the startup investment world in the past three years. A great read for both current and future investors, as well as entrepreneurs to understand how investors think
• Nauta Capital invested in Croatian API analytics and monitoring platform Treblle
• Rocio Pillado of Adara Ventures wrote a blog post explaining their investment in Barcelona-based NFT infra company Freeverse
• Levels Up Ventures is a new Barcelona-based pledge fund that has backed 10 companies to date
• Lanzadera and LaLiga announced a partnership to back more companies that sell products and services to professional football teams

Startup news 💡

• According to this El Confidencial article, it could soon be possible to create a new Spanish company without visiting the notary, all through online processes
• El Confidencial wrote about the founders that have joined Pedro Sanchez in his Silicon Valley trip, featuring the founding teams of CARTO, Red Points, Wallbox, Adara Ventures and Rated Power
• Spanish cosmetics brand Cocunat announced that from 2019 to 2020 they increased their sales from €4m to €32m, with positive EBITDA of €2.3m
• ABC talked to Cristobal Viedma (Lingokids), Sonia Fernandez (Kibo) and Dario Villena (Kapita) about the edtech sector and what trends they're seeing in the market. From covid acceleration to the relevance of Asian markets
• Arengu, developers of a low-code user flow builder solution, launched on Product Hunt and also announced that they're currently participating in Y Combinator's latest batch. The first Galician startup to do so. Arengu is a K Fund portfolio company
• Barcelona-based payroll advancement startup Payflow is also participating in Y Combinator's current batch, as explained in this Launch HN submit. The company has recently started its international expansion, via Chile
• Former El Corte Ingles president Dimas Gimeno and Atitlan Capital announced plans to launch an Amazon ecommerce aggregator
• El Español profiled Treinta, a Colombia-based startup co-founded by Spanish entrepreneurs Lluís Cañadell and Men Hei Lou. Treinta recently raised more than $14m after going through Y Combinator
• French insurtech company Lovys announced a new round of funding and also the fact that they just launched in Spain
• Startup profiles: Agerpix

Join us on September 9, 2021 for a special online event dedicated to driving value for startups and scaleups. Some highlights include:

- Opening keynote from Astro Teller, Captain of Moonshots, X the moonshot factory - Behind the scenes insights from cutting-edge technologists - Lessons in building stronger teams through diversity and inclusion - Inspiring sessions about how startups are innovating with Google Cloud solutions

Register now and stay up-to-date as we reveal more over the next few weeks.

Big company news 🏦

• Correos (yes, the logistics company) plans to launch its own MVNO and a new cloud computing service aimed at government-owned entities. This is not something out of 'El Mundo Today', this seems to be genuine reporting
• Apple Spain has been in the press quite a bit in recent months. The company has now announced that in the past year it has hired 100 people in Spain and also officially disclosed the acquisition of Barcelona-based AI company Vilynx

Interesting reads 🤓

• Cyprien Hallé, VC at Samaipata, wrote a post about 'How to build a great tech team at seed stage'
• Simon Muñoz, platform product manager at Voicemod, published 'How to motivate a product team'. Simon also wrote another blog post on product development last week, this time about building a product development process
• Vicent Marti, co-founder and CMO of Streamloots, published an interesting thread about how to build and maintain an online community
• Diego Arroyo, co-founder of laagam, published a thread with sales numbers of Spanish DTC and ecommerce brands

Podcasts 🎧

• Intercambio Ionico interviewed Miguel Caballero of Tutellus
• Runroom interviewed Pedro Serrahima of O2
• MarsBased interviewed Eleanor Manley, CTO at Metta Space
• Itnig interviewed Jaime Martinez of cloud kitchen business Cuyna
• Minimalism interviewed Diego Arroyo, co-founder of fashion brand laagam