By Aisling Finn on Monday 11 January 2021
Fintechs flourished on Seedrs, maintaining the title of the most invested-in sector, with £78m invested in fintechs through the platform.
Crowdfunding platform Seedrs saw investments through its platform top £293m in 2020, hitting a milestone of £1bn invested to date on Christmas Day.
Fintech remained the most invested-in sector, scooping £78m collectively, with other areas seeing huge increases in investment, for instance, healthcare firms saw a 292 per cent jump in investment in 2020.
Seedrs says over 70 campaigns raised over £1m on the platform, with big fintech names such as money management app Snoop, which raised £10mhere have been nearly 14,000 investor exits on its secondary market to the tune of £5m, Seedrs says.
Jeff Lynn, executive chairman and co-founder of Seedrs, said: “Given the huge challenges that 2020 posed for all businesses, it is a source of great pride for the Seedrs team that have come to the end of the year having delivered meaningful growth across all key metrics.”
The record figures come as Seedrs saw losses widen, reporting a loss of £4.7m in the year ending December 2019 and admitting that Covid-19 has caused a “material uncertainty” which “may cast significant doubt on the group’s ability to continue as a going concern”.
Seedrs’ losses were published no more than one day after its merger with fellow crowdfunding platform Crowdcube was announced.
Seedrs and Crowdcube’s merger is to be structured more like an acquisition by Crowdcube of all of the outstanding share capital of Seedrs and the management team at the yet-to-be-named firm will include key leaders from both firms.
Under the new company, Jeff Kelisky, Seedrs’ CEO, will serve as CEO of the combined company, and Darren Westlake, Crowdcube’s CEO and co-founder will serve as Executive Chairman.
21 March 2023
Daniel Lanyon