After what looked like a messy boardroom fallout, which in turn saw founder and then CEO Wladimir Baranoff-Rossine win his case for “constructive” dismissal, we appear to finally have closure on this chapter of the MobiCart story. The UK m-commerce startup has announced that it’s received investment — first touted as an acquisition but now being billed as “restructuring” — by Asian incubator Get2Volume.
The move will also see the company relocate to Singapore, where its new investor is based, while Get2Volume’s Claire Mula and Geogy Zachariah will now head up MobiCart’s product execution, and technology, respectively.
Mula and Zachariah previously built Mobicart partner company Sprooki, which is described as providing Asia’s largest malls and leading retailers with a white-label location-based retail system to help them win more customers.
MobiCart says it’s also bolstered customer support — good news for the companies that rely on its m-commerce app building solution, after that element of the startup went a tad wobbly in the midst of founder Baranoff-Rossine leaving.
MobiCart is a platform that enables businesses to build and manage an m-commerce store, either as a native app for Android or iOS, or as a HTML5-based Web app. Apps created by MobiCart can operate standalone or tie into an online retailer’s existing website. Along with its storefront-builder, the MobiCart platform is underpinned by an ecosystem for extensions written by third-parties.
One of its most direct competitors is Germany and Palo Alto-based Shopgate. In a further twist to the MobiCart story, after winning his case against the company he founded, covered first here on TechCrunch, Baranoff-Rossine was recruited by Shopgate as its COO, a role he currently holds.
Prior to funding from Get2Volume, MobiCart had raised almost $1 million from Northstar Ventures-managed Finance for Business North East Proof of Concept Fund, and the Yorkshire Association of Business Angels, as well as receiving backing Baranoff-Rossine.
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