MASAJ, the bodywork brand founded by Scarlet Amies and Alice Vaughan to professionalise massage for guests and therapists alike, has raised £1.5m in a round co-led by FIGR Ventures, the London-based early-stage consumer fund, and Sorven Capital, with participation from angel investors including Giles Brook.
The funding takes MASAJ’s total raised to £2m and will fund new studio openings across London over the next 12 months as the company moves to become the first scaled brand in massage.
The news comes as the UK’s legacy massage industry sits on shaky foundations. For customers, the market is fragmented and inconsistent, with little regulation and no trusted brand delivering high-quality treatment at scale. For therapists, the profession is often built on a gig economy model, meaning unpredictable work, little support and high staff turnover. MASAJ was founded to fix the two interrelated problems at once.
The funding will drive a new phase of business expansion, including team growth, new London locations over the next 12 months, and building working capital to keep opening at pace – with a longer-term ambition to build the category-defining modern bodywork brand, first in the UK and then beyond.
Scarlet Amies, CEO and co-founder of MASAJ, says: “London's wellness market is fragmented, with no trusted brand delivering consistently high-quality massage at scale. We set out to fix that – with modern, welcoming studios that offer a crucial place for stillness, where every guest gets a brilliant treatment every time, and where therapists get stable, well-supported careers rather than gig-economy instability. This funding will help us bring that to many more corners of London."
"When I set out to find aligned investors, my dream was a fund as invested in our mission as in our margins. We have two in FIGR and Sorven – mission-driven funds who truly understand the product and the gap in the market, and back founders with more than capital. They're hands-on, engaged and perfectly aligned with what we're building."
