Hubba Inc., which is an e-commerce startup from Toronto, is ready to raise $45 million in new venture-capital financing as it looks to expand the use of its consumer product-information platform beyond North America to the U.K.
Toronto-based Hubba’s platform offers marketing and other information on a vast array of products—everything from Unilever PLC’s Dove brand soap to Anheuser-Busch InBev NV’s Budweiser beer. Clients including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., Target Corp. and others use the site to ensure the product information they provide to their customers is complete and accurate. Hubba’s technology also distributes companies’ product information toAmazon.com Inc. and other online shopping sites.
Toronto-based Hubba launched its platform about 18 months ago and has since lined up more than 10,000 companies, mostly U.S.-based, to list their products on its site. The system features close to a million different products, Mr. Zifkin said. Hubba is targeting the U.K. as its next major market, betting it will benefit from the growth in e-commerce activity in that country, which is home to many global brands and retailers. The latest financing will help that effort.
Hubba’s fundraising also offers an early sign that the strong growth in venture capital investment in Canada-based startups last year could continue in 2016. That sign comes amid an uncertain outlook for early-stage companies in North America, where some startups have fallen short of expected valuations when they went public or were sold to a strategic buyer.
According to the company, Hubba expects its $45 million deal to close by the end of March. That would follow year-over-year gains in both the total value and number of deals in Canada for the first nine months of last year. consumers’ growing use of smartphones and other digital devices both to buy products online and to access information about brands is driving interest in Hubba.
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