EstateGuru raises £5m from series A funding round
EstateGuru has raised €5.8m (£5m) from its series A funding round, led by UK venture capital firm TMT Investments.
The European peer-to-peer property lender said that the fundraise exceeded its initial target by 260 per cent and its maximum target was achieved within just four days, instead of the initially planned 40-day campaign.
Publicly-listed TMT Investments was also an early investor in transportation app Bolt and cloud-based software app Pipedrive.
Other investors in the EstateGuru fundraising campaign included Swiss venture capital firms Verve Ventures and Swiss Immo Lab, and the investment banking arm of Czech bank J&T.
The successful series A fundraise follows an equity crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs in May, which raised €1.3m.
“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,” said Marek Pärtel (pictured), chief executive and co-founder of EstateGuru.
Read more: P2PFN‘s exclusive interview with Marek Pärtel
“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 start-ups, 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.”
Artyom Inyutin, co-founder and head of Investments at TMT Investments, said that EstateGuru solved 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 $350bn (£254bn) to $0.5trn,” he added. “We strongly believe in EstateGuru’s prospects.”
Last month, EstateGuru passed the €400m lending milestone. The marketplace currently lends in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Spain, Germany, Sweden and Finland, and is now planning its expansion into the UK and the Netherlands.