Nuuri, a Scottish tech startup, has raised £275,000 in a successful pre-seed funding round, achieved 90 days after launch—four weeks ahead of schedule. The oversubscribed round underscores strong investor confidence in the company’s vision to transform the way parents find and enrol their children in nurseries. With this capital, Nuuri sets out to build the UK’s first unified digital platform that streamlines the entire nursery search and enrolment process, helping families save time, reduce stress, and make informed childcare choices.
Backed by the Scottish Government’s Tech Scaler accelerator programme, Nuuri stands as a pioneering venture focused on solving a pressing problem for modern parents and caregivers. Founder and CEO Steven Clarke, himself a working father, created Nuuri after personally experiencing how fragmented and outdated the current nursery enrolment process can be. His frustrations—missed calls, cancelled viewings, endless waiting lists, and poor digital access—fuelled the creation of a platform that modernises early-years childcare services in the UK.
Bridging a Critical Gap for UK Parents
Nuuri directly addresses a glaring issue: the lack of transparency, efficiency, and digitalisation in the UK’s nursery search and application process. A national survey conducted by Nuuri found that 79% of parents ended up on a nursery waiting list, with 43% reporting wait times of 9–12 months. Additionally, 63% of parents described the nursery search and enrolment experience as poor, citing non-transparent practices and inadequate digital systems as key pain points.
Clarke and his team listened carefully to this feedback. Rather than letting these frustrations go unanswered, they built a solution tailored to solve these issues in a practical, user-centric way. Nuuri combines comprehensive nursery listings with cutting-edge technology and a strong understanding of the parenting journey.
A One-Stop Solution: The Rightmove of Nurseries
Dubbed “The Rightmove for nurseries,” Nuuri offers parents a seamless digital experience from initial search to final enrolment. The platform allows users to filter nursery listings by postcode, start date, and age of the child. Parents can take virtual tours, compare room capacities, calculate childcare costs, and use intuitive filters to pinpoint the best options.
Beyond search tools, Nuuri includes a robust advice hub designed to answer real-world parenting questions. Parents gain access to in-depth information about funding eligibility, nursery types, what to look for during visits, and guidance on how to navigate long waitlists. By centralising this information, Nuuri empowers parents to make faster, more confident decisions during one of the most significant transitions in early parenthood.
Boosting Nursery Capabilities Through Digital Transformation
Nuuri doesn’t only cater to parents. The platform also supports nursery providers by offering them a modern digital presence and an efficient administrative system. Nurseries often struggle with outdated enrolment processes, paper forms, and communication breakdowns. Nuuri removes these hurdles by providing a polished, digital front-end experience that automates and organises the pre-enrolment journey.
Through Nuuri, nurseries can display their facilities online with ease, manage parent communications efficiently, and onboard new families faster. This directly reduces the administrative burden on staff, giving them more time to focus on their core mission: nurturing and educating young children.
Nafeesah Rafiq, owner of Bright Bees Nurseries in Leicester, praised Nuuri for delivering the kind of innovation the sector has long needed. “Nuuri is bringing the kind of digital experience our sector has waited far too long for,” she said. “Their platform lets us showcase our nurseries online with a level of polish we could never manage alone, guiding parents smoothly from search to enrolment. By lifting the admin burden, Nuuri frees our team to spend more quality time nurturing the children in our care.”
Strategic Investment for a Stronger Digital Ecosystem
Nuuri’s £275,000 pre-seed round came from a mix of private investors and early supporters who recognised the massive untapped opportunity in childcare technology. The team closed the round in just 90 days, significantly ahead of the projected timeline, which demonstrates strong validation for their product and roadmap.
The startup will use the funds to enhance its core product with advanced AI capabilities. These tools aim to replace the outdated manual methods still used across much of the sector. By leveraging artificial intelligence, Nuuri plans to automate key parts of the enrolment workflow, improve matchmaking between families and nurseries, and deliver personalised guidance to parents.
Additionally, Nuuri will allocate capital to strengthen the parent onboarding journey, enhance nursery marketing capabilities, and support the rollout across the UK’s private nursery sector. The company intends to build scalable solutions that adapt to various local requirements, ensuring broad adoption across different regions.
A Founder’s Mission Rooted in Experience
Steven Clarke, the driving force behind Nuuri, isn’t just building another tech company. He’s solving a real problem that he faced personally. “In 2023, my wife and I experienced the complexities of finding a nursery for our newborn daughter,” Clarke explained. “As first-time parents, we had no idea how hard and time-consuming looking for a nursery would be. I set out on a mission to tackle this problem head-on and ensure the process is less stressful for future parents and caregivers.”
That mission fuels Nuuri’s growth and purpose. Clarke sees the company as an ally for modern parents juggling work, home life, and childcare. “We’re the UK’s first platform to digitalise search and enrolment in one place, making life easier for both parents and nurseries,” he said. “As a working parent, I fully understand the juggle. That’s why we’re here—to lighten the load and support parents at every step.”
Clarke envisions Nuuri as the new standard for early-years childcare in the UK. “We aim to make it as easy as possible for parents and nursery providers, so we have built a multi-purpose platform that makes it simple, transparent, and reliable,” he said. “I am excited to see our roadmap of enhanced features come to life over the next few months, fuelled by this external investment and backing.”
Looking Ahead: Driving Change in Early Childhood Education
As Nuuri moves forward, the company plans to scale its platform nationwide, starting with the private nursery sector and eventually branching into broader early-years education services. The team remains committed to innovation, transparency, and family-centric design.
Nuuri’s arrival signals a welcome shift for an industry long burdened by inefficiency. With the support of the Scottish Government’s Tech Scaler programme and an engaged investor base, Nuuri is well-positioned to reshape early-years childcare for the digital age.
The journey is just beginning, but the mission is clear: empower parents, support nurseries, and make early education more accessible, transparent, and stress-free. With its bold vision and proven demand, Nuuri stands poised to redefine how families across the UK experience one of life’s most important decisions—where to send their little ones to grow, play, and learn.
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