£270k · Pre-Seed · Sports · London, UK
London-based Paralo has raised an oversubscribed £270k pre-seed round to develop an operating system for golf clubs and a connected product for golfers. Tech.eu reported that £250k of the founder-led angel round was raised under the UK's Seed Enterprise Investment Scheme.
Founded in 2026 by Jarrad Hicks and Zaheer Merali, Paralo is bringing membership, tee sheets, competitions, payments, EPOS, food and beverage, marketing, reporting and agronomy into one platform. The company says it is deploying with a leading UK private golf club as an early design partner, after the founders spent months shadowing club staff and mapping their workflows.
One database replaces a chain of handoffs
Golf clubs often assemble their operations one system at a time, leaving staff to reconcile member records, bookings, competition entries and sales across separate products. Paralo's commercial argument is that a shared database can remove those handoffs: a visitor booking can reach the tee sheet, a competition score can update a live leaderboard, and a sale can sit against the same member record used elsewhere in the club.
That breadth is useful only if clubs can adopt it without disrupting daily operations. Paralo says it handles migration from an incumbent provider, runs both systems in parallel and can move most clubs live within four to six weeks. It also prices per club rather than per member, charges no per-transaction fees and promises a full data export if a customer leaves. Together, those choices are meant to lower switching anxiety around software that touches both the clubhouse and the course.
Product depth depends on infrastructure access
The platform extends from back-office records to iPhone and Apple Watch apps, live scoring, course maps and member communications. That creates a wider product surface than a conventional booking tool, but it also creates dependencies. Tech.eu reported that technology providers need England Golf approval to connect to World Handicap System infrastructure and that Paralo was still waiting for access in England at the time of the round.
The pre-seed capital therefore funds more than feature development. Paralo must prove that an integrated product can meet clubs' varied operating rules while securing the external access needed for core competition workflows. Hicks previously sold health technology into hospital environments, while Merali has systems-engineering experience at Cisco and Webex; the immediate test is whether that background translates into dependable onboarding and a repeatable club-by-club sales motion.
Explore this theme
Europe's SME Vertical SaaS 50 — āltitude, hosted on EUVC · 10 December 2024. The analysis argues that vertical operating systems need multi-product depth from day one, directly framing Paralo's attempt to serve both club staff and members.
