Published : 7 years ago, on 17/05/2018

Close of £2m seed funding round to support continued growth

CapitalRise.com, the online prime property lending and investment platform, has closed a £2 million seed round from Raakhe K Tandon, daughter of renowned banking entrepreneur Rana Kapoor. This latest investment will support the company’s fast paced growth, allowing for expansion of the team and opening up new property investment opportunities in Prime Central London and other highly sought-after locations across the UK.

The family of Raakhe K Tandon established YES Bank in 2004 which has today become the fourth largest private sector bank in India. YES Bank currently has 1,100 branches pan India, employing 18,238 people with a balance sheet size of £33.5 billion and market capitalization of £8.5 billion.

Raakhe chose to invest in CapitalRise after recognising its unique prop-tech position for UK property developers on one side, who could raise financing from individual and corporate investors on the other side, who could earn market-leading returns of between 8-12% per annum.

Commenting on the decision to invest, Raakhe K Tandon said: “We are delighted to have partnered with CapitalRise. The size of the market opportunity and quality of the management team, gives us immense confidence that CapitalRise will be a formidable platform for online crowd sourced property finance. We look forward to working with shareholders and management with a combined ambition of making CapitalRise highly successful and a leader in its field.”

Uma Rajah, CEO at CapitalRise, said: “This investment comes at the perfect time for CapitalRise. Over the past 19 months we have built our technology platform and proved our business model, having already paid out over £2 million back to investors. Our latest opportunity was fully funded in under two business days, witnessing, on average £730,000 of funding raised from our members each working day (with a waiting list of members ready to invest in our upcoming projects). This seed funding will underpin our next stage of growth, helping us to grow the team and pursue more opportunities for investors and developers alike.”

CapitalRise has grown exceptionally quickly, having more than doubled its investor base in the past 12 months and has seen a tremendous increase in demand from both borrowers and investors on the platform. The online lending platform provides members with direct access to prime development and investment projects they would not ordinarily be able to access. CapitalRise members can invest from as little as £1,000 and importantly, their investments also get ISA benefits.

For borrowers, CapitalRise fills a gap in the property finance market with innovative financing solutions which traditional lenders just cannot match (with respect to turn-around and appetite).

It offers both debt and equity funding, with products including bridging loans, development finance, and development exit loans. CapitalRise has seen increasing interest from borrowers looking for finance for their projects over the past few months having received over 100 enquiries in one day alone for the new development exit loan product which was launched last month.

The strength and expertise of the senior team and founder shareholders was pivotal to Raakhe’s decision to invest. Launched by the founders of Finchatton – Alex Michelin and Andrew Dunn in 2016, CapitalRise was borne out of frustration about the challenges that property developers face when trying to secure financing for projects. CEO Uma Rajah, is a highly experienced fintech operator, having spent over a decade in the sector, including six years at Wonga where she was Head of Product, launching and developing a range of consumer, business and P2P lending products.