Skip to main content

October closes $300 million in new funds for its SME lending marketplace

French fintech startup October has raised some fresh capital to invest in small and medium companies on its lending platform. Overall, the company has gathered $300 million (€258 million) from various partners that will be deployed over the next few years.

This is not a traditional startup funding round as today’s new investment is specifically designed to finance new loans on its platform. October isn’t selling equity in exchange for capital.

October works with small companies in France, Spain, Italy, Netherlands and Germany that need a credit line. For small and medium companies, you can apply for a loan and get an answer just a few days later. October evaluates risk before handing out loans thanks to industry-specific data analysis and human analysts.

Loans range from €30,000 to €5 million. There’s no personal guarantee and interest rate varies depending on the risk associated with your application.

On the other side of the marketplace, individuals can contribute to SME financing. But the startup has been relying more and more on institutional investors looking for different types of assets to diversify their investment portfolios.

Hence today’s new influx of cash. Here’s the full breakdown:

  • $23 million (€20 million) will be used for traditional SME loans with monthly repayments.
  • $44 million (€38 million) will be deployed in the tourism industry specifically — hotels, restaurants and more. Six insurance companies and French public sector financial institution CDC are contributing to this fund. Companies applying for loans in this category can delay repayment.
  • $232 million (€200 million) will be injected in Italian SMEs in particular. Italian bank Intesa Sanpaolo Group is investing exclusively in this fund. Those government-backed loans will go live quite rapidly as everything will be deployed by the end of 2020.

As you can see, October is becoming an important technological partner for European support plans during the economic crisis. The startup can issue government-backed loans and some public institutions are choosing October to finance SMEs.

Over the past five years, October has handed out around 1,000 loans. It represents $521 million (€448 million) in capital. That number will go up rapidly following today’s announcement.

Crowd-lending platform October hits pause on loan repayments



from Startups – TechCrunch https://ift.tt/3kW9aLV
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Thousands of cryptocurrency projects are already dead

Two sites that are actively cataloging failed crypto projects, Coinopsy and DeadCoins , have found that over a 1,000 projects have failed so far in 2018. The projects range from true abandonware to outright scams and include BRIG , a scam by two “brothers,” Jack and Jay Brig, and Titanium , a project that ended in an SEC investigation. Obviously any new set of institutions must create their own sets of rules and that is exactly what is happening in the blockchain world. But when faced with the potential for massive token fundraising, bigger problems arise. While everyone expects startups to fail, the sheer amount of cash flooding these projects is a big problem. When a startup has too much fuel too quickly the resulting conflagration ends up consuming both the company and the founders and there is little help for the investors. These conflagrations happen everywhere are a global phenomenon. Scam and dead ICOs raised $1 billion in 2017 with 297 questionable startups in the mix. The
Post a Comment
Read more

Dance launches its e-bike subscription service in Berlin

German startup Dance is launching its subscription service in its hometown Berlin. For a flat monthly fee of €79 (around $93 at today’s exchange rate), users will get a custom-designed electric bike as well as access to an on-demand repair and maintenance service. Founded by the former founders of SoundCloud and Jimdo , the company managed to raise some significant funding before launching its service. BlueYard led the startup’s seed round while HV Capital (formerly known as HV Holtzbrinck Ventures) led Dance’s €15 million Series A round, which represented $17.7 million at the time. E-bike subscription service Dance closes $17.7M Series A, led by HV Holtzbrinck Ventures The reason why Dance needed so much capital is that the company has designed its own e-bike internally. Called the Dance One, it features an aluminum frame and weighs around 22kg (48.5lb). It has a single speed and it relies on its electric motor to help you go from 0 to 25kmph. And the best part is that you
Post a Comment
Read more