EstateGuru*, the pan-European marketplace for short-term, property-backed loans headquartered in Tallinn, Estonia, today announces the successful closure of its Series A funding round, with investments coming from Switzerland, United Kingdom, Czechia, Austria, Germany and Cyprus.
The lead investor for the round is TMT Investments Plc, a UK VC, and a public company that was also an early investor in both Bolt and Pipedrive. Among other VCs, there are the Swiss VCs Verve Ventures and Swiss Immo Lab, and J&T IB and Capital Markets, the investment banking arm of the Czech investment bank J&T.
The total amount raised is €5,8M (ca $7M). This follows a successful equity fundraising round on the Seedrs* platform in May this year. The round exceeded its initial target by 260%. The campaign’s maximum target was achieved within just four days, instead of the initially planned 40-day-campaign. EstateGuru says it has been thriving thanks to retail investors’ support for the business model since the very beginning of the company, with 41% of new investors coming from referrals and 90% of investors doing so repeatedly. One in two borrowers returns to EstateGuru by taking out six loans in ?ve years’ time on average. This was also the reasoning behind the Seedrs round in May. EstateGuru states it believes in the importance and power of the community and considers it extremely important to give them a chance to participate in the equity raise.
‘We have an ambitious technology and expansion roadmap for the next few years, and the success of this fundraising round will position us perfectly to deliver on this and continue providing all investors and borrowers with the very best real estate financing platform. We are developing a modern ecosystem for market participants and believe that very soon, traditional financiers will also prefer to use our platform in order to stay competitive. The fact that the same investors who have invested in two of Estonia’s leading startups, Pipedrive and Bolt, have now chosen to put their faith in EstateGuru is the perfect affirmation that our business model is robust and that we are ready to seriously accelerate our growth,’ says Marek Pärtel, CEO and Co-Founder of EstateGuru.
‘We are happy to support EstateGuru in the new round. It solves important problems – attracting money to real estate and at the same time making it possible to invest investors’ funds at a profit and at the most modern level. According to various estimates, the p2p lending market will grow by 2025 from $ 350 billion to $ 0.5 trillion. We strongly believe in EstateGuru’s prospects’, – says Artyom Inyutin, Co-founder & Head of Investments, TMT Investments.
‘There is a significant SME financing gap in Europe and a strong investor appetite for high-yield investment products. EstateGuru is in a perfect position to take advantage of these two trends and become a global leader in real-estate backed lending.’ added Jo?o Duarte from Verve Ventures / Swiss Immo Lab.