A Dubai-based Salon & Spa Booking Startup With Global Goals Has Raised Fresh Funds- Valutrics

Dubai-based booking platform for salons and spas Shedul.com raised $6 million in a Series A funding round.

The funding was led by Dubai-based Middle East Venture Partners (MEVP), while Dubai-based BECO Capital and San Francisco-based Lumia Capital also participated in the round.

The latest funding follows an earlier seed round also led by MEVP.

The startup will use the funds to scale the company’s operations and expand its product development, it said.

Launched in 2015, Shedul—which is pronounced like the British schedule—streamlines business operations for beauty salons with free-to-use software.

It manages booking appointments, point of sale, customer records, human resources, inventory, and financial reporting for beauty salons.

In less than two years, Shedul claims to have signed up over 40,000 merchants in more than 120 countries. Over half of Shedul’s users are in the US, followed by the UK, Canada, and Australia, it says.

The platform has been growing at an average rate of 35% month on month in terms of user base, it claims and expects to process over $1 billion worth of appointment bookings by the end of 2017.

Shedul is solving a critical pain point for such small businesses, said co-founder and CEO William Zeqiri.

Software offerings for salons and spas are often expensive to purchase and difficult to use, Zeqiri said.

As a result, the majority of businesses operate without any software at all, he added.

“Over 52% of salons in the US still manage their bookings with pen and paper. We have merchants who have over 80% of their bookings made online by customers,” said Nick Miller, COO.

Shedul is a global success story and a testament to Dubai’s emergence as a center for innovation and technology, Mansour added.