TruRating has announced that it has raised £9.5 million in Series A funding. This takes the total amount raised by founder Georgina Nelson since 2014 to £13.7 million. TruRating is a mass-market ratings system and offers an alternative model to Trip Advisor and Yelp! by giving retailers and restaurants the assurance that the feedback they receive is from a genuine paying customer. Everyone who uses a payment terminal to pay is asked to rate one of five questions related to service, value, product, experience and likelihood to recommend the brand, on a scale of 0-9. Retailers are given the feedback in real-time so they can assess service levels and make adjustments and improvements. 9 out of 10 people asked to rate when they pay do so, providing merchants with a mass market view of service and value performance across the company.
Earlier this year TruRating hit the first landmark 1 million ratings, and just seven months later has already doubled this to hit 2 million. In time, this information will be made available to consumers online, making it easy to compare ratings and make an informed choice about where to shop and eat. TruRating is live in the UK and Australia working with numerous small independent retailers and restaurants, fast-growing restaurant chains, such as Ping Pong and Franco Manca, through to large merchants like Arco. Pilots are also underway in both markets with major brand names. Later this year, TruRating will go live in North America, with its first payment partners, and a number of merchants.
Georgina Nelson, Founder and CEO of TruRating, explains how important the investment is: “Our aim is to bring honesty and transparency back to consumer ratings globally. We have had an incredible year, building a world class service with our partners and customers. Securing this funding will help us take TruRating to the next level. There’s a huge appetite among businesses to get validated, real-time ratings from the majority of their customers. Now 88 per cent of people asked to rate do. It’s such an easy way for consumers to have their say and be listened to, and for merchants to respond and improve.” Georgina adds, “We will be announcing more payment partnerships in the coming months. These will allow us to open up TruRating to even more merchants and as a result some very big household names will be working with us by the end of the year, adding millions more ratings every day.”
This round of funding was led by Sandaire, an international investment office for families and foundations, and a private family investment group. Early rounds of seed funding included investment from angels Peter Ayliffe, former President & CEO Visa Europe and now chairman of TruRating, Anthony Gutman, Co-head, European Investment Banking Services at Goldman Sachs International, and Chris Blundell, Global Head of Technology at Brunswick Group.
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