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Winners circle: Five of the most notable crowdfunding raises in Australia

Who's on the podium? ABB FIA Formula E Championship winner Sam Bird receives his bottle of champagne. (Photo by FIA ABB Formula E / Getty Images)

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For investors with an interest in equity crowdfunding, it helps to have an overview of what deals have been completed so far.

Here’s a summary of five raises that met their fund raising target with a successful close.

Xinja

The digital bank became one of the more high-profile crowdfunding success stories when it raised $2,409,000 on Equitise in 2018.

And demand remains strong; the company just closed a follow-up round of $2,589,780 this month, from a pool of 1568 investors.

Xinja is currently building Australia’s first independent ‘neobank’.

In layman’s terms, a neobank is a 100 per cent digital and mobile platform (no physical branches) that utilises a new banking system which varies from a traditional bank.

Essentially Xinja aims to build a bank designed and personalised by the customers interests, helping them make better financial decisions with greater financial control.

The beta version of the Xinja app and prepaid card is currently on the apple app store.

We’re not sure if any Royal Commissioners have downloaded it yet.

DC Power Co

In 2018, crowdfunding platform OnMarket successfully raised $2,181,750 in capital for DC Power Co through 14,950 different investors.

This raise also holds the record for the largest spread (i.e. the number of unique investors).

DC Power Co is a solar focused energy retailer which utilises household solar power structures to consume less energy.

The company aims to engage the 2 million solar households in Australia, potentially 6 million by 2050. A massive task and we suspect the $2m will not go that far, so expect to see further raisings from them.

Clearstate

Raising approximately $1,700,000 through VentureCrowd, Clearstate is a property development company managing projects from acquisition, subdivision, adherence to government regulation and local planning requirements.

The funds raised in 2016 were put towards building a residential development in Sydney’s South West Growth Centre.

Property development is very capital intensive, so it will be interesting to see of Clearstate return to crowdfunding for any future capital needs.

Identitii Limited

Identitii Limited campaigned in 2018 through Equitise, managing to raise $1,672,500 with 289 different investors.

Identitii is an Australian software company providing enterprise software for financial services and banking intuitions.

With the capital raised, the firm was able to develop an application that enabled the secure and trusted information exchange through the utilisation of blockchain.

Currently, Identitii is managing a long-term plan for the product, continually improving the application and aiming to add additional features.

InGogo

Setting the record for the largest crowdfunded capital raise in Australia, InGogo managed to raise approximately $6,700,000 in 2015 with the help of VentureCrowd’s platform.

However, those funds were raised within a different regulatory framework.

This was before Australia passed laws on crowdfunding in the form of the Corporations Amendment (Crowd-sourced Funding) Bill 2016.

In other words, it was before privately held Pty Ltd companies could go to market and ask for money from crowd-raising platforms. So some may argue it doesn’t count.

However, the raise is over 2.5 times more than the next top billing so we think it is worth being included in our list.

InGogo is an Australian taxi-booking app and payment platform that faces massive competition in the industry against companies such as Uber and Taxify.

 

Former fund manager and finance academic, Dr Nigel Finch advises growing business on strategy execution, corporate governance and capital raisings. He has worked across all stages of the business cycle from start-ups to seasoned ASX-listed companies including many who have tackled Asia’s emerging markets. Authoring more than 5 books and 100 scholarly articles, Dr Finch has a thing or two to say about business.

 

If you have a private deal you think we should know about, get in touch with us at private-i@stockhead.com.au.
This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.
Categories: Private-i

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