Leading hospitality tech business Embargo has been awarded the £350,000 UK Smart Grant by the UK Government to develop an AI model for its CRM and loyalty platform.
The London-based firm is the UK’s leading CRM, loyalty and ordering platform, used by nearly 2,500 food and drinks SMEs.
The company has reported a 200% increase in revenue in the past two years, achieving this growth without any increases to its team or costs.
It has also just exceeded 11m transactions on its app, with 50% of those coming since January 2024.
“We are about to reach half a million app transactions monthly, which is a great testimonial to the work we put in to make our solution easy to use and absolutely best in class for both businesses and their customers,” said co-founder Fryderyk Szydlowski.
“Our cash-efficient strategy and product-led growth have attracted fantastic investors to our round. We are looking to oversubscribe it given the interest we have received and use the fact that we still have EIS allocation left.
“There’s a lot of work ahead of us but we couldn’t be more excited. Hospitality SMEs need powerful, easy-to-use solutions more than ever and we are here to provide them. It is time to accelerate!”
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Tsewang Wangkang, co-founder, Embargo, added: “Our mission is to help the tens of thousands of hospitality SMEs to tackle the major challenges they continue to face. Increases to running costs thanks to rising wages, inflation and the incoming National Insurance changes make this ever-more important – the sector needs help.
“We are beyond excited to receive this grant and take our mission to the next level. SMEs deserve the highest level of technology in an easy-to-use, scalable form.
“We have already shown that our platform has a major impact on our customers’ growth – our AI development will now make it even more powerful, giving businesses tools they never had.”
Besides the UK Smart Grant, the firm is also finalising its EIS funding round, which will be used to fuel their market penetration, revenue growth and further develop the platform.