Swoop raises £5.4m for international expansion
Swoop has raised £5.4m in a Series A funding round to support its international expansion plans.
The small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) finance aggregator, which offers a number of peer-to-peer lending platforms as finance options, secured the funding from venture capital group Velocity, Arab Bank Ventures, IAG and WeHo Ventures in California.
Velocity is an existing investor in Swoop, alongside other early backers including UK private investors and Enterprise Ireland.
The Ireland-headquartered firm said that the funding announcement follows a surge in demand for SME financing and it forecasts its revenues to rise by 450 per cent this year.
Andrea Reynolds, co-founder and chief executive of Swoop, said the proceeds of the fundraise would be used to expand into new markets, with a particular focus on North America.
Swoop recently launched in Australia, in addition to its offices in the UK and Ireland.
More than 75,000 businesses have used Swoop platform since it was launched in 2017, to access funding sources including equity, grants, loans and tax credits. Swoop is planning to expand its team to 80 staff members by the end of the summer, up from 60 at present.
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“Access to finance is the number one issue facing SMEs, but they have traditionally been an underserved customer segment,” said Andrea Reynolds, co-founder and chief executive of Swoop.
“Finance is data-driven and borderless. With the influx of new lenders into the market, Swoop is able to connect SMEs with the funding they need wherever they are in the world. To date we’ve helped our customers secure £500m to grow their businesses.”
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“Andrea and the team at Swoop have executed strongly on their potential since we first invested in the company in 2018,” said Rajeev Saxena, chief executive of Velocity.
“We are excited to see them take their vision to new markets.”