Pouch, the U.K.-based money-saving browser extension, has been acquired by German ‘publishing technology’ platform Global Savings Group.
Exact financial terms of the deal remain undisclosed, although I understand it to be a cash purchase and in the 7-figure U.S. dollar range, plus performance related bonuses.
The entire Pouch team are joining Global Savings Group, and founders Ben Corrigan, Jonny Plein, and Vikram Simha will continue working on Pouch as its “Global Product Leads”.
Launched publicly in September 2016, Pouch is best known for its shopping tool that automatically alerts buyers to working voucher codes as they visit over 3,000 U.K. e-commerce sites. The Pouch browser extension is available for Google Chrome, Safari and Firefox. It’s free to download.
Last year, the company garnered a nice PR boost after appearing on the BBC television show Dragons’ Den. This included receiving investment offers from all five Dragons, culminating in an offer of £75,000 in exchange for 18 percent equity split between Touker Suleyman, Jenny Campbell and Tej Lalvani. However, as is quite common in Dragons’ Den, the deal ultimately fell through, with Pouch eventually seeking equity financing on better terms elsewhere.
The London startup was backed by a consortium of angels, including Andreas Zollmann, and had raised just £345,000 in total. Pouch also won the MassChallenge prize and went through the Huckeltree Alpha Programme in 2017 and the Natwest Entrepreneur Accelerator programme in 2018.
Meanwhile, Global Savings Group’s acquisition of Pouch looks like a decent fit. The company offers commerce content to help publishers find additional routes to monetisation. It operates over 100 digital assets for various leading publishers globally. In the U.K., this includes powering discount voucher sites for Daily Mail and Metro, delivering “inspirations, recommendations, deals and discounts” to consumers.
Regarding Pouch, Global Savings Group says it will incorporate the product into its white label offering for publishers in multiple markets.
“Pouch allows our users to shop with the confidence that they are always getting the biggest saving, without wasting time searching for deals across the internet,” says Pouch co-founder Jonny Plein in a statement. “We are incredibly excited to join the Global Savings Group family and continue to improve our products and build new tools that help people save time and money when shopping online”.
