Grover, a Berlin-based startup rethinking financing for the consumer electronics market with a subscription model, just signed a €10 million asset-backed debt financing deal with Varengold Bank to fund its rapidly expanding business. The new deal is an extension of the original €4 million transaction signed in January of this year.
Founded in 2015, Grover enables people to subscribe to tech products monthly instead of buying them. Over the last 12 months, Grover‘s monthly orders increased by 36 times and total subscription value increased eight-fold, making it one of the fastest growing startups in Germany.
Since January 2017 consumers are able to rent technology gadgets with Grover via the online shop of Europe’s largest Consumer Electronics retailer MediaMarkt. Recently Grover announced that it has expanded its distribution partnership with MediaMarkt Saturn Group to include MediaMarkt‘s offline stores in Berlin.
Michael Cassau, Grover‘s founder and CEO: “We are very pleased with the new facility, which enables us to fund further rapid growth and allows us to offer more products to our customers. The overall goal is to continue to meet the demand we’re seeing by investing in products and expanding the number and depth of partner relationships. We have a portfolio of more than 1000 products adding new products all the time when the latest tech comes out.”
Lukas Diehl, Head of Marketplace Banking at Varengold Bank: “We are delighted to be able to further support Grover’s development. Although this is a relatively large facility for a company of Grover’s size, it’s strong unit economics and thorough risk management have given us comfort to increase the funding.”
In parallel with the current growth story, Grover attracted a further high profile talent and appointed Thomas Antonioli as CFO. Thomas Antonioli has more than 10 years of international work experience joining Grover from leading German Fintech Kreditech, where as VP of Corporate Finance he raised more than €400 million in equity and debt capital.
Grover is backed by prominent investors such as Global Founders Capital, Target Global and Commerzbank’s Main Incubator and the company is currently preparing its Series A equity financing. In the beginning of this year, we mentioned Grover as one of 10 German startups to watch in 2017.
