Handshake, a retail agreement platform startup based in London, has raised £2.4 million in funding led by Triple Point Ventures, with participation from Future Back Ventures by Bain & Company, Octopus Ventures, and other retail technology investors. The funds will be used to accelerate product development, expand its engineering and customer success teams, and support deeper partnerships with leading retailers and suppliers.
When a product appears on a grocery shelf, it is the result of hundreds of commercial agreements between retailers and suppliers covering space, activation, rebates, and dozens of other terms. Despite technology transforming much of retail, those agreements still rely heavily on spreadsheets, email chains, siloed systems, and informal arrangements. Today, fewer than 50% of suppliers have written agreements with the retailers they sell to.
Handshake's platform gives retailers, wholesalers, and suppliers a single transparent system to make, track, and execute commercial agreements. By unifying all commercial agreements in one place, the platform replaces fragmented processes with a faster, more accountable, and data-driven way to manage deals, strengthening partnerships and enabling retail leaders to drive more effective change across large trading teams.
The retail industry faces pressure from inflation and cost volatility, alongside tighter margins, more complex supplier relationships, and increasingly scrutinised compliance requirements. Handshake's team combines experience across retail operations, enterprise technology, and AI product development. Current customers include Gopuff, whose Director of Merchandising Strategy and Supplier Relations oversees hundreds of supplier partnerships across multiple categories.
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.
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.
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.
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.
