Supply chain startup Handshake raises £2.4m led by Triple Point Ventures
This article covers Handshake, a London-based supply chain startup that has raised £2.4m in a seed funding round led by Triple Point Ventures, with participation from Future Back Ventures by Bain & Company, Octopus Ventures and other retail technology investors. The funding is intended to accelerate product development, expand engineering and customer success teams, and deepen integrations with retailers and suppliers to digitise the commercial agreements that underpin grocery and retail buying.
Handshake, a London-based supply chain startup, has raised £2.4 million in a seed funding round led by Triple Point Ventures, with participation from Future Back Ventures by Bain & Company, Octopus Ventures and other retail technology investors. The money will be used to accelerate product development, grow engineering and customer success teams, and deepen partnerships with retailers and suppliers — a push Handshake says aims to digitise the commercial agreements that underpin grocery and retail buying.
Why it matters
Retail buying remains surprisingly manual: hundreds of commercial agreements govern how products reach shelves, yet many of those contracts are managed across spreadsheets, email chains and siloed systems. Handshake points to industry friction — fewer than 50% of suppliers have written agreements with the retailers they sell to — that creates complexity in an environment of tight margins, inflationary pressure and rising compliance demands.
If the platform works as claimed, it reduces administrative overhead and brings greater traceability to rebates, space allocation and activation terms. For retailers and suppliers, that can translate into fewer disputes, faster decision-making and more consistent execution across trading teams.
Inside the product
Handshake offers a single system for retailers, wholesalers and suppliers to create, track and execute commercial agreements. The platform covers a wide range of deal elements — space, activation, rebates and joint business plans — and aims to replace fragmented manual processes with a centralised, auditable workflow. The company says it is also building with AI capabilities in mind to surface insights and enforceability across large portfolios of agreements.
The founding team combines retail operations experience with enterprise technology and AI product development. One of Handshake’s early customers is Gopuff, whose merchandising teams manage relationships across many categories and suppliers; that kind of customer is a test case for the platform’s ability to handle scale and complexity.
In the announcement, Victor Angline, Director of Merchandising Strategy and Supplier Relations at Gopuff, said:
At Gopuff, our merchandising teams oversee hundreds of supplier partnerships across multiple categories, so it's important we have the right tools to manage all the details. We chose Handshake to empower our merchants with a platform that enables seamless management of contracts, agreements, and joint business plans. They have been amazing partners, and we look forward to continued collaboration.
Who are the investors?
The round was led by Triple Point Ventures. Participants named in the release include Future Back Ventures by Bain & Company and Octopus Ventures, alongside unspecified retail technology investors.
Handshake says the funding will support product development and team expansion as it pursues deeper integrations with retailers and suppliers. Future Back Ventures’ backing frames the opportunity through a consultancy lens: Bain’s venture vehicle cites the team’s category expertise combined with technical depth as key to addressing a longstanding operational problem in retail.
In the announcement, Cameron Ramsay, Director at Future Back Ventures by Bain & Company, said:
Handshake is transforming how retailers and suppliers work together, and its team combines the technical depth and category expertise this problem demands. This is a category ripe for disruption in the age of AI. Handshake's platform offers a genuinely credible path forward on a problem the entire sector has wrestled with for years. And our Bain experience only reinforced our conviction in both the team and opportunity. Its potential to unlock value across retailers, wholesalers, and suppliers is substantial.
If you're researching potential backers in this space:
- Explore our list of supply chain venture capital firms in the UK
- Browse our directory of supply chain angel investors in the UK
Founder perspective
In the announcement, Alex Lindsay, Co-founder & CEO at Handshake, said:
Retail buying is a brutally tough job, and the sector faces structural headwinds that show no signs of easing. The commercial teams at the heart of it deserve better tools, visibility, and outcomes, which is why we built Handshake. Handshake is a fundamental reimagining of how retailers and suppliers work together, and there's never been a better moment to bring this to the sector. We believe this category is one of the largest untapped opportunities in retail.
In the announcement, Peter Welch, Co-founder & CTO at Handshake, said:
Technology has transformed almost every corner of retail over the past decade, but retail buying still runs largely on spreadsheets, disconnected systems, and anecdotal memory. That creates enormous operational complexity in an industry where margins are tight and every commercial decision matters. We believe there's a huge opportunity to build the AI-native operating system for retail buying, one that gives retailers and suppliers the visibility, structure, and accountability they need to work better together.
The bigger picture
Handshake’s raise is another sign of investor interest in digitising back-office retail processes and the broader move to apply AI to operational workflows. For supply chain startups and retail technology companies, the addressable problem is substantial: improving contract transparency and execution can directly affect margins and supplier relationships.
As retailers and suppliers across the UK and Europe face tighter margins and more complex compliance requirements, solutions that reduce manual friction will attract attention from strategic and venture investors alike. Handshake’s progress with customers such as Gopuff will be one practical test of whether a unified commercial-agreement platform can change how buying gets done across the industry.
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