Israeli global equity crowdfunding platform OurCrowd has closed $72 million in Series C funding. Participants in this latest round include financial institutions, family offices, and private investors from five continents.
OurCrowd CEO Jon Medved said, “OurCrowd has grown exponentially since our launch in 2013 to become the leading global platform for Equity Crowdfunding. This transformative Series C funding will allow us to take advantage of the growing investor interest in quality equity crowdfunding and further expand our global operations. One half of the round will be invested in the expansion of our 7 global offices, and further developing our technology platform. The other half of the Series C funding will be used to make sure that each and every company which raises funding on our platform receives participating investment from the General Partner on the same terms as the crowd. This new capital will help us hit our goal of investing $1 billion annually by 2020.”
Jerusalem-based OurCrowd has to date invested in 100 portfolio companies and funds on its platform. Total investment in companies and funds now exceeds $300 million. OurCrowd has had nine exits to date from its portfolio investments: two IPO’s and seven acquisitions. These include ReWalk (IPO: Nasdaq), Crosswise (bought by Oracle), Replay Technologies (bought by Intel), and NextPeer (bought by Viber).
OurCrowd portfolio company Consumer Physics CEO Dror Sharon said, “OurCrowd was one of the earliest investors in the SCiO vision. We have grown up together and come a long way, from their initial investment of $325,000 in Consumer Physics to several million dollars invested by OurCrowd into Consumer Physics so far. But what makes OurCrowd so important for Consumer Physics is not just the money, but the assistance and worldwide connections they make for our company, on a weekly and sometimes daily basis.” According to Dr. Richard Swart, former Director of Crowdfunding Research at UC Berkeley, "OurCrowd continues to lead the equity crowdfunding market not just in numbers but in the quality of their deal flow and number of their exits. They have consistently proven that crowdfunding can deliver not only the best deals but also healthy returns. OurCrowd's impressive new funding round should enable them to address the considerable challenge of scaling up their business to the billion-dollar level."
“We understand the ambitions of startups and emerging enterprises and want to help them grow into sustainable businesses. We look forward to working closely with OurCrowd to further develop their platform to support the startup ecosystem both in Singapore and the broader Asian market,” said Janet Young, Managing Director of Group Channels and Digitalization at UOB Group, one of Singapore’s leading banks. “Our investment into this Series C funding for OurCrowd reinforces our commitment to supporting startups and small businesses.”
Geoff Levy, Chairman of Monash Private Equity in Sydney, Australia, an OurCrowd investor and member of the OurCrowd Advisory Board, stated that “OurCrowd has grown incredibly fast over the last 3+ years. With this new and important Series C funding, we expect to continue this steep growth trajectory, not only gaining more investors and capital worldwide, but most importantly increasing the ‘crowds’ involvement in sourcing and adding value to our remarkable portfolio of companies.”
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on September 21, 2016
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