Both UK employers and employees suffer from stress – often in silence. With the increased awareness of how important mental health is becoming, it’s easy to see why startups tackling this crisis have gained a lot of traction recently. Now, wellness tech company Urban has become the latest UK startup in this field to raise an impressive round.
The company has just secured a $10m series B investment led by venture platform Accelerated Digital Ventures. The VC firms Passion Capital and Felix Capital had previously invested in Urban and returned to support the venture in this round too. Together they pumped $5.5m into the business, while Urban also counted the $4.5m crowdfunding round raised on Seedrs in August 2018 as part of its series B. This brings the grand total raised by the company to $21.1m across seven capital injections, according to Crunchbase.
Founder Jack Tang launched the startup in 2014 after he recognised how little massage therapists were earning and all the the hassle they had to deal with. Originally named Urban Massage, the company has since grown from being a booking system for massages to also offer a range of wellness-related services like osteopathy, facial and nail treatments. Since the launch Urban has delivered over 451,000 treatments, helped independent practitioners earn $26.28m and developed the company’s platform.
Urban already offers its services in several British cities and in Paris. Talking with TechCrunch, Tang said he aims to use the new money to grow beyond the locations it’s currently available in and to develop digital-only services where clients can access wellness treatments through their devices. Urban plans to also introduce fitness sessions as part of the arrival of new categories. The company has already begun the search for 30 new engineers to join its Vilnius office and fuel this push.
It’s encouraging to see another service that helps boost the wellbeing of UK professionals successfully raise capital, as it comes fresh from mindfulness app Calm’s massive $88m series B round in February. We can’t wait to see how this sector develops in the coming months. 
