The marketplace for digital loans.

smava.de, one of the fastest growing marketplaces for loans in Europe, announced that $16 million has been raised in additional funding to fuel the company’s growth and to advance its unique customer scoring technology. The round was led by Phenomen Ventures, a leading international venture capital firm focused on investments in internet technology and an investor in Prosper Marketplace in the US. Existing investors Earlybird and Neuhaus Partners also participated in this round.

“We are excited to welcome Phenomen Ventures as equity investors,” said Alexander Artopé, CEO of smava. “We have experienced very strong growth over the past three years and in March 2015 surpassed $600 million in loan volume. This fresh capital enables us to accelerate our business growth as well as to fulfill our vision of offering fully-automated loans to borrowers at best rates in the near future. GP Bullhound’s in depth knowledge of the Fintech sector and their global network of investors was invaluable to this growth round.”

Claudio Alvarez, Director at GP Bullhound stated “Smava is rapidly emerging as the category leader in its sector with a unique proprietary platform and a hugely talented team. We are delighted to have helped them close this growth round which will allow them to capitalize further on the opportunity.”

“In the last two years, smava has become a leading player in the huge German consumer lending market,” said Igal Weinstein, Partner of Phenomen Ventures. “We’ve been very impressed with the team and what they have been able to accomplish, and we are excited to work with them as they grow further.”

“In only three years smava has successfully built out its strong market position in Germany and has consistently delivered on its business goals”, said Dr. Christian Nagel, Partner of Earlybird. “We are thrilled to welcome Phenomen Ventures as a strong partner on smava’s journey to category leadership.”

The transaction underlines GP Bullhound’s depth of experience in Fintech, being its seventh transaction completed in the sector in the last 15 months alone, including those completed for clients such as Pozitron, CarLoan4U, KnCMiner and Payone.

Enquiries
For enquiries please contact Manish Madhvani, Managing Partner, at manish.madhvani@gpbullhound.com, Claudio Alvarez, Director, at claudio.alvarez@gpbullhound.com and Julian Riedlbauer, Partner, at julian.riedlbauer@gpbullhound.com

GP Bullhound
As dealmakers in technology, GP Bullhound provides independent strategic advice on mergers and acquisitions and private placements to entrepreneurs, companies and investors. By combining a true passion for innovation with great access to global buyers and capital across Europe, US and Asia, GP Bullhound has completed transactions with many category leaders including Avito, Delivery Hero, Fjord, King.com, Pingdom, Pozitron and Spotify. The firm was founded in London in 1999 and today also has offices in San Francisco, Stockholm, Berlin and Manchester.

Smava
smava is a leading loan marketplace in Germany connecting private borrowers with a large variety of private lenders and banks. smava’s platform provides consumers with personal loans of between 1,000 and 125,000 EUR. Due to advanced scoring technology and a wide range of loan products available, borrowers receive an instant loan at best rates and free of charge. Borrowers also receive independent advice from smava’s loan specialists. Borrowers use personal loans on smava for a variety of purposes including debt consolidation, cars or home improvement. Over the past years, more than $600 million in personal loans have been issued through the smava platform. smava is a German company based in Berlin with over 80 employees. Find more information at www.smava.de