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Four British Startups Breaking Through The Billion Dollar Mark

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Meet the billion dollar British businesses plotting global domination. While the UK has often been criticised for its failure to turn exciting early-stage, fast-growth companies into world beaters, its record is improving, with a string of companies hitting the big time over the past few months. Four high-tech companies this year alone have attracted investment that values them at $1bn or more, and others are waiting in the wings.

Funding Circle

Founded by three partners in 2010, Funding Circle announced this week that it has raised $150m in a funding round that takes its valuation to the magic $1bn mark. The latest finance raising was lead by Yuri Milner’s DST Global, which is best known as an early backer of companies including Facebook and Airbnb. Funding Circle is one of Britain’s biggest peer-to-peer finance companies and specialises in raising money for small businesses, which have struggled to pick up debt capital from mainstream banks since the financial crisis. It’s no longer just a domestic business, having expanded into the US last year – this fundraising will help it accelerate that expansion.

TransferWise

TransferWise is one of several British companies that sees huge potential in the international money transfer market, which has traditionally been dominated by large players such as Western Union . TransferWise claims these firms are far more expensive than they need to be – its model seeks to match-make people in different countries looking to send money at the same time, and therefore to cut out the transfer system altogether. The business was launched in 2011 but announced earlier this month a financing round that saw investors lead by Andreessen Horowitz, the well-known Californian venture capital group (but also including Sir Richard Branson, the Virgin Group founder) put in £38m. That took its valuation to $1bn according to analysts.

WorldRemit

Launched in 2010 by the Somali-born entrepreneur Ismail Ahmed, WorldRemit is another London-based money transfer company attracting a great deal of attention from international investors. These have included the likes of Accel Partners, which took part in a $100m fund raising earlier this year alongside Technology Crossover Ventures, the investor previously associated with both Facebook and Netflix . WorldRemit is expanding aggressively and is already allowing customers to send money from 50 countries to 117 countries around the world. Like TransferWise, its business model relies on its online platform to undercut traditional players in the money transfer industry.

Shazam

Unlike the three businesses above, Shazam isn’t a fintech play. Rather, it produces an app that allows users to identify any music they hear on their radios, playing in shops, or anywhere else. The business has been going since 1999, but what started out originally as a clever gimmick for music fans has rapidly discovered an increasing number of commercial opportunities, with monetisation strategies now in place across the advertising and marketing industries, for example. Shazam has previously attracted investment from the Mexican billionaire Carlos Sliim, but earlier this year picked up another $30m which took its valuation to $1bn. Its app now has 100 million active users each month.