UPGRADE PACK RAISES £1 MILLION IN PRE-SEED FUNDING

• New fintech startup, Upgrade Pack has raised £1 million in its pre-seed funding round, with the company valuing at £6.67 million.
• Upgrade Pack’s technology transforms the way airline and hotel upgrades are attained by the most valued customers and employees of the world’s most innovative companies.
• The company was recently cited as the top funded startup working with travel products and services for the last six months by Crunchbase.

Upgrade Pack, a new fintech-based loyalty startup which helps banks and employers reward their most valuable customers and employees with exclusive discounts on flight and hotel upgrades, has raised £1 million in its pre-seed funding, valuing the company at £6.67 million. The raise makes it the top funded startup working with travel products in the last six months. High profile angel and institutional investors backed the round, which took place through late summer and early autumn of 2018, with the money raised used to build its specialist team and deliver Upgrade Pack’s proprietary platform.

Upgrade Pack’s marketplace technology connects airlines and hotels with travellers who want an upgrade to provide them with exclusive, always-discounted offers on unused premium seats and rooms, accessible through a highly responsive app which places users just three clicks away from an upgrade. Upgrade Pack will be opening its next seed funding round later in Q1 at £2.25 million with a £15 million valuation.

Initially available as part of premium bank account or credit card, or as an employee reward, Upgrade Pack works on a cost-per-user subscription basis, enabling its clients to reward their most valued customers and employees with the most sought after travel-related benefit (95% of consumers say the thing they value most when travelling is an upgrade).

Founder and CEO Craig Unsworth has previously delivered tech-led products and innovations that have generated millions in revenue and business value for companies including Ten Group (IPO on AIM, November 2017), Global Blue and Blue Rubicon; where he met co-founder and COO Urchana Moudgil – an accomplished finance and operations leader whose agency background includes roles at SEEN, Shine Communications and Freuds. The pair have appointed heads of product, technology and commercial to form a leadership team which, including their own, brings experience gained in key specialisms across product and proposition design, advertising and brand consultancy, loyalty services and digital strategy and innovation.

Craig Unsworth, Founder and CEO of Upgrade Pack commented:

“We are delighted to have raised this preliminary capital through the support of individual investors who saw value in what we were creating but can also bring expertise gained across relevant sectors such as loyalty, technology, travel and banking. It’s rare to reach this stage based purely on smaller investors however, having successfully established ourselves in 2018 we look forward to launching our next funding round – and engaging with a broad pool of supporters across investment, legal VC and more – later this quarter, which will take us to our next capital milestone and closer to our launch to market in early Q2.”

NOTES TO EDITOR

• Craig Unsworth and Urchana Moudgil founded Upgrade Pack in 2018 and currently employ a team of 15 at its Richmond office.
• The Idea for Upgrade Pack came to Craig Unsworth whilst on a flight to New York. Craig started to sketch out a unique way to use marketplace technology to connect; airlines and hotels with unsold premium seats and rooms; those who love to travel; and companies looking for an innovative, exclusive reward product.
• 95% of people say the one thing they want the most when they travel is an upgrade. The average occupancy of an airline is 73%, with hotels average occupancy at 84%. Airlines and Hotels often don’t want to publicly offer discounts and cheaper their brand.
• Upgrade Pack’s advisory board comprises notable experience from fields that align directly with Upgrade Pack’s key target industries; including Loyalty (Jan-Pieter [JP] Lips, ex Aimia and now at Adyen) and Financial Services (Joe Norburn, formerly of RBS and Coutts, and now CEO of Recordsure) and Technology (Peter Dolukhanov, who founded mobile specialist Nice Agency before selling it to Karmarama, now part of Accenture Interactive).
• The company recently announced it had become the UK’s first tech company to give all its employees share options to become the ‘John Lewis of Tech’
• Upgrade Pack recently exhibited at Web Summit, Europe’s largest tech conference, in Lisbon. Upgrade Pack was specifically selected by the event organisers to feature in its BETA program, a category normally reserved for later stage companies.
• Peter Shackleton (VP of Commercial) recently spoke at the Future of Marketing Conference on the 22nd November, in a panel discussion on the Future of Retail, with Greg Barden of Pixie and Gareth Jones, Marketing Director of Ebay UK.
• Upgrade Pack is proud to be diverse and has an equal gender split across the company, including the leadership team and within software development.

FOR MORE INFORMATION

To read more about Upgrade Pack, please visit upgradepack.com

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Twitter: @UpgradePack
LinkedIn: Upgrade Pack
Instagram: @upgradepack
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MEDIA ENQUIRIES

For all Upgrade Pack media enquiries, please contact Jasmine El-Gabban on 020 7499 2842 or by email to [email protected]