SimpleFinance, a Russian online micro-lending platform targeting small and medium-sized businesses, has agreed a $15 million equity investment deal with the Japanese fund SBI FinTech Business Innovation Fund LPS.
The fund’s total capital commitment to SimpleFinance now stands at nearly $50 million, taking into account a first round of funding just one year ago.
Launched in 2015, SimpleFinance offers several financing tools including factoring, asset-backed loans, unsecured loans (up to 3 million rubles, approximately $50,000), and tender loans. It claims that its portfolio growth reached some 500% per year from 2016 to 2018.
SimpleFinance’s platform supports fully electronic document processing and online-only customer interactions. In addition, the company has built its own P2P-platform, called SimplyFi, for small and medium-sized businesses to raise funds directly from private investors.
The company competes with a number of banks or micro-finance organizations, but claims that none of these competitors has an identical product mix.
Established in 1999, the SBI Group has asserted itself as a pioneer in the fintech industry. Its portfolio includes a variety of startups from the fintech, IT, mobile, bio-life science, artificial intelligence and Blockchain sectors.
