Fintech investor Draper Esprit secures £110m fundraise

The listed venture capital firm has backed a number of UK fintechs including Revolut, Seedrs and N26.

Draper Esprit, a listed venture capital fund has raised £110m in a new share issuance to invest in a number of new and follow on investments.  

The share price of the new issuance is equivalent to the latest NAV per share as at 31 March 2020. 

The firm says that there remains “a significant opportunity” to invest new cash owing to a growing European venture capital market and an “accelerated transition to digital driven by the COVID-19 pandemic”. 

“While the European Venture Capital market is expanding rapidly, it is still less than one quarter of the combined size of the US and European market by value. European technology companies are remaining private for longer, limiting public investment opportunities and investment round sizes are increasing,” the firm said in a press release. 

COVID-19 has prompted a significant shift to online activity is evident from everything from online medical consultations to a global surge of online shopping,” it added. 

A secondary impact of this, it says, is a strong shift in demand for supporting services such as online payments, fraud detection and security, cloud banking infrastructure and online infrastructure. 

Draper Esprit saw the value of its portfolio rise by 18 per cent in the year to 31 March, now worth £703m, mainly driven by an uplift in Revolut’s valuation.