London’s Piton Capital leads on $13.2m investment in US-Poland startup Booksy

London firm Piton Capital has led on a multi-million pound investment into Booksy, the booking app for appointment-based beauty companies.

American-Polish startup Booksy raised $13.2m (c.£9.5m) in a funding round with Piton, early-stage venture capital firm OpenOcean, and investors including Sebastian Kulczyk and Zach Coelius.

The company will use the backing to drive global growth, recruit high profile talent and develop technologies that simplify the customer experience.

Measures will includes the implementation of one-click booking, which uses machine learning and AI tech to offer each user the best dates with their favourite stylists based on their buying patterns.

Booksy was co-founded by business partners Stefan Batory and Konrad Howard, the minds behind Poland’s top taxi-hailing app, iTaxi.

In March last year, the company raised $4.2m in Series A funding.

Piton Capital partner and co-founder Andrin Bachmann said: “We are delighted to back Stefan and the entire team at Booksy again.

“They are starting to see the benefits of a strong network effect, and we believe they have an opportunity to build the leading SaaS-enabled marketplace in the beauty industry in the US and beyond.”

Booksy chief exec Stefan Batory commented: “There is a clear need for Booksy’s mobile-first approach, it gets to the heart of some of the core challenges for micro-beauty businesses.

“It is this, alongside the business model and on-boarding process, which has helped Booksy to become the world’s leading booking app for appointment-based businesses.”

He continued: “Booksy’s considerable growth can be attributed to a substantial network effect and referrals from existing customers, who love the product because we negate the needless back and forth associated with the whole booking process.”