With the closing of a $ 10 million capital raise, Freeda Media expands its activities beyond the Italian market, starting the internationalization process with the launch of the Spanish office. The funding round of the media company is led by Alven Capital and participated by U-Start, the largest investor Club in venture capital in Italy. The funding round was also joined by a group of business angels including Khaled Helioui, Stefano Sala, and Paloma Castro Martinez.
Freeda is a media brand founded in September 2016 by Andrea Scotti Calderini and Gianluigi Casole. The young company produces premium content aimed at the millennial women target, distributed mainly on social platforms such as Facebook and Instagram. The business model is based upon the creation and distribution of branded content and integrated communication activities. The Freeda team is made up of about 60 people in Milan, 75% of which are women, and the hiring of the Spanish team is under way.
Gianluigi Casole, Co Founder & CEO of Freeda: “we are glad to partner with such respected investors. They can all contribute to the long-term success of the company in many different ways. Our team has worked intensively in the last 15 months and we have great challenges ahead to achieve our full potential. We are very much motivated and confident to do that. The launch of the Spanish operations is just a first step towards the expansion of the company. We are currently exploring new markets in South America and the rest of Europe”.
According to Andrea Scotti Calderini, Co Founder & CEO of Freeda, the funding round “is an important milestone for the company and for the team. With this operation our aim is to increase our capacity to offer premium content to our users and partners. We will also differentiate and expand our business model. Today branded content is our primary revenue stream. We want to start cooperating together with other platforms and we want to offer our partners solutions that respond to the challenges presented by a constantly evolving communication market. Focusing on metrics such as quality and interactions, our ultimate objective is to build a media brand able to inspire millions of women around the globe”.
The brand was able to put together 1.3 million Facebook users and more than 500 thousand followers on Instagram in one year of activity. Every day, Freeda’s posts reach over 3 million people, generating an organic total reach of 24 million unique users per month in Italy. The most important metric for the company is the engagement rate: Freeda generates amongst the highest number of monthly interactions in the world across all female media brands.
In the first year of activity, Freeda has already collaborated with premium brands and international companies across different sectors such as fashion, beauty and fast-moving consumer goods.
“We gravitated towards Freeda Media because we felt the company has a unique value proposition in the media landscape and the results they achieved in almost one year of activity are remarkable,” said Jeremy Uzan, Partner at Alven. “We were impressed with the company’s execution and business model. Freeda has demonstrated an ability to rapidly integrate original and branded contents, which few international media players have. With this round, we aim at supporting the company’s internationalization process in Spain and other strategic countries“.
