Edinburgh hospitality disruptor sets £2 million goal after smashing crowdfund target

An Edinburgh-based hospitality tech disruptor is now looking to raise £2 million after smashing a crowdfunding target set at a quarter of that amount.

Bosses at ePOS Hybrid revealed they had hit the initial £500,000 goal within 15 minutes of going publicly live.

Founded in Edinburgh by computer science graduate and serial entrepreneur Bhas Kalangi, the firm offers a suite of point-of-sale, fintech - financial technology - and digital ordering products for hospitality businesses.

Its technology promises to automate a bar, restaurant or takeaway’s operations and streamline everything from customer ordering to stock control and kitchen management.

The tech start-up, which also has an office in London, has grown rapidly in the past two years, with its successes catching the eye of investors.

Kalangi said: “This has blown away our expectations and is a real tribute to everything the team has achieved in the past two years.

“Despite the pandemic having considerable impact on the hospitality sector, our technology has scaled impressively in the past 24 months with a 400 per cent increase in our client base and 2000 per cent increase in the volume of transactions being processed by our platform.

“We knew the crowdfunding round had huge potential, because of the interest and conversations we’ve been having with investors over the past six months. It is reassuring to see that interest has turned into financial backing.”

Bhas Kalangi is the founder of Edinburgh-based ePOS Hybrid.

He added: “We could simply close the funding round now, but we know there are still many individual and smaller scale investors who would love to be involved, particularly as the next stage of our growth will be to scale internationally.

“Therefore, we are going to extend the crowdfunding process to mid-June. It may be ambitious to set the new target at £2m but it feels like the right time to set the bar high.”

The investment opportunity is being offered through the Crowdcube platform - where the firm has enjoyed previous success. Its initial seed funding round took place on Crowdcube in early 2020, when it achieved 145 per cent overfunding, smashing the original £250,000 target.

During the past two years, ePOS Hybrid’s technology has processed more than £97m of transactions for UK businesses, the firm has expanded its user base to some 900 UK locations and in excess of 7.5 million consumers have used its products to order a meal or buy a round of drinks.

The secured investment will enable the fledgling company to roll out its tech to more businesses in the UK, support international expansion into new territories, such as India, and enable further innovation.

Bosses said the company’s various plug and play elements, including point of sale, operations management and digital ordering systems, all work together “seamlessly on a single platform”.

By “empowering customers to create new sales channels, increase efficiency and reduce third party commission costs”, the firm says it has helped hospitality businesses save some £1.6m on third-party commissions, like food delivery services, in the past two years.

Head of growth Andrew Gibbon said: “The advances we have made since our last crowdfunding success are game changing.”