Norway-founded Nimber connects what it calls “senders” and “bringers”, allowing people to save and make money on journeys that are already being made to carry out deliveries.
The Scandinavian service launched in 2013 and entered the UK in beta in April 2015, although the platform will officially go live across Britain in September 2015, arriving complete with an iOS app to complement the web channel.
With the UK a focus for the firm to help grow its overall user base of 40,000 users across both territories, Nimber has secured an $850,000 investment and brought on sharing economy expert Debbie Wosskow as board adviser.
The company hopes to double its size by the end of the year and is looking to expand its presence by striking up delivery deals with retail and ecommerce partners. The idea behind this is to secure validation among consumers and businesses alike, while underscoring the community-centric design.
Wosskow, of course, is a champion of the British sharing economy as both the founder of Love Home Swap and also the chairwoman of trade body, the Sharing Economy UK (SEUK). As such, she is well placed to deliver guidance to the Nimber team.
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“I’m delighted to be joining Nimber as a board advisor. They are one of the most exciting sharing economy startups in the UK right now,” she said. I’m looking forward to working with the management team to help scale the business – and to continue to make the UK the home of the sharing economy.”
The new round takes Nimber’s total funding to $1.25m and was provided by Swiss Family Offices, Investment Bankers SJP Holdings, Laurent Raymond, Christophe Spanier and Rémi Berthon.
In addition to securing partnerships, the capital will be used to expand UK teams across operations, marketing, community and technical divisions. Elsewhere, London was recently named the Norwegian firm’s headquarters, harnessing the UK city as a platform to conquer the rest of Europe.
“It’s great to see how positively the UK is embracing the sharing economy, people are really getting behind the concept and incorporating it into their everyday lives,” said Nimber CEO Ari Kestin.
“We’re really keen to build on this interest and momentum, and so we’re focusing on leveraging investment to build a robust team to drive our presence in the UK market and beyond. By the end of 2015, we plan to have doubled the company in size in terms of employees and have considerably increased our community base.”
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