Online venue marketplace HeadBox has expanded into Manchester and Birmingham after raising £1.2m in seed-funding.

The website, which connects event planners with host venues, plans to have around 250 spaces available across both cities, with its Manchester venues including the People’s History Museum, TNQ and Albert Hall.

After launching in London in October 2015, the marketplace now showcases 2,000 unique spaces across the capital including coffee shops, art galleries, yoga studios, theatres and bars.

HeadBox CEO and founder, Andrew Needham (pictured), said: “There is no-one like us in the UK”, and added that Birmingham and Manchester were both “bursting with a wide variety of quirky and creative spaces, so it was only natural we went there next. We are looking forward to disrupting the traditional listings approach and opening up the under-utilised, creative and unexpected off-site locations across these and other UK and global cities”.

HeadBox placed 74th in the 2016 Start-ups 100 List, an index of the UK’s rising start start-ups predicted to grow rapidly over the coming year.