DTC’s Daily Digest brings you the latest news on the world’s fastest growing direct-to-consumer brands. In today’s edition: ID Finance to raise £2m in crowdfunding; Patch enters overfunding; and Uber lays off 350 employees.

ID Finance to raise £2m in crowdfunding

Barcelona-based fintech startup ID Finance is attempting to raise £2m in equity through crowdfunding on Crowdcube, with over 75% (£1.52m) of this target having been raised at time of publication. The funding, which equates to a total equity figure of 2.41%, will purportedly be used to further the company's expansion, having launched in Spain, Brazil, and Mexico from 2015 to 2017. Should the funding round be successful, the firm would be valued at over £81m.

ID Finance offers a range of financial services targeted at entrepreneurs, SMEs, and customers who are unable to access credit through traditional banking means. The company earned revenue of €45m (£39m) last year with approximately 3 million registered users using the firm's products.

Patch enters overfunding

DTC plant retailer Patch has entered overfunding, having raised £1.6m from a targeted £500,000. The company, which currently operates exclusively in London and Paris, earned over £4.48m in revenue last year, which represents an increase of 124% year-on-year from 2017. During that time, over 250,000 plants were sold via their website.

The funding will be used for three purposes: to further the expansion of Patch in other European markets, to simplify the supply chain and to launch a B2B offering for large and repeat orders.

Uber lays off 350 employees

Uber has laid off approximately 350 employees as part of ongoing job cuts, with a total of 1200 redundancies in less than six months. The job losses are spread across several departments, including Eats and performance marketing. Notably, this is the first round of cuts to affect the Advanced Technologies Group, which is Uber's self-driving vehicle division. In the second financial quarter this year alone, Uber lost more than USD$5bn (£3.9bn).

In an email sent out to Uber employees, CEO Dara Khosrowshahi stated, "Today is the last wave of a process we began months ago with our Marketing team, and more recently, with our Product and Engineering teams. This time, ATG, Eats, Global Rides and Platform (Rides Ops, CommOps, Safety & Insurance, U4B, and Product Ops), Performance Marketing, and Recruiting have made changes. As part of this exercise, some of our employees are being asked to relocate, and around 350 will be leaving the company.

"Days like today are tough for us all, and the ELT and I will do everything we can to make certain that we won’t need or have another day like this ahead of us. We all have to play a part by establishing a new normal in how we work: identifying and eliminating duplicate work, upholding high standards for performance, giving direct feedback and taking action when expectations aren’t being met, and eliminating the bureaucracy that tends to creep as companies grow."