Tech City News Elevator Pitch alumnus Nelson Sivalingam has raised a seed round for his latest venture Wonderush.
Wonderush is a subscription service that lets you do ‘something new every day’ for £29 per month, from salsa to standup, yoga raves to ukulele classes.
The round, for an undisclosed amount, was joined by tennis player Andy Murray, along with MyVoucherCodes’ Mark Pearson via the Fuel Ventures Fund.
Entrepreneur Sivalingam was one of the winners of the Tech City News Elevator Pitch series 3 with his video-led restaurant booking platform One Minute London.
The company announced a partnership with Bookatable back in January but has since licensed out the video side of the platform and pivoted the booking technology into the new Wonderush business.
“What I’ve learned is to react to things you learn a lot of quicker- the quicker the learning curve the better,” Sivalingam told Tech City News.
“What took us a year and a half to do at One Minute has taken us six months with Wonderush.”
On his next steps, Sivalingam said the focus is on both increasing the variety of experiences on offer, as well as growing its membership.
“Our differentiation compared to other booking services is our business model. We chose a subscription service because booking things individually can get quite expensive.” The platform also enables you to cancel whenever you need to.
On working with Andy Murray, Sivalingam said: “This is in the pipeline and he’s a very exciting person to be involved with. He’s big on health and well-being, as well as getting involved with lots of other projects.”
Fuel Ventures was set up by Pearson and invested in by Murray when it raised £539,900 using the Seedrs crowdfunding platform.
Wimbledon champion turned investor Murray has also put his cash into salad company Tossed and 3D online retail store builder Trillenium on Seedrs, as well as joining the crowdfunder’s board.
In conversation with Seedr’s president and COO Carlos Silva, Business Insider also found that Murray has been quietly backing healthtech, wearables and sports ventures.