Romanian fintech Beez, an app which offers spending benefits (cashback) and credit with no interest for online shoppers, has received an investment round of €250K from GapMinder Venture Partners and Roca investment fund, along with a private investor. The total amount attracted by the startup, founded by Lucian Cramba and Vasile Tamas, has reached €450k so far. With the help of this financing, Beez is preparing to expand into the UK.
“We want to test the market in the United Kingdom. I can say that we are already with one foot there because the UK version of the app is already active and we also have an office at Level 39 hub in Canary Wharf Financial Center,” said Lucian Cramba, co-founder of Beez.
Founded in 2018 and based in Cluj, Beez already has more than 130 merchants in their UK marketplace but plans to add 1,700 more in the next weeks – thus covering about 65% of the UK e-commerce market. The founders are aiming to bring names like Amazon, Asus, Nike or Under Armor into their portfolio and attract a £2 million funding round in the next six months.
Beez targets people who shop online and finance their shopping with credit card debt and gives them an alternative with the same benefits and more, but without the side effects of the bank products (interest, commissions, late fees). They want to eliminate the bank from the transactions, and support the financing cost directly from the retailer as a wholesale discount. The benefits for users include spending benefits (cashback), an automated savings solution, credit with no interest, no late fees, and no commissions.
Beez rewards their users for good financial behavior through their “sweet deals”. This means that with the money saved through the app you have the possibility to buy some products for 60-70% of their value.
For merchants, the app provides an extra revenue channel and a loyalty program based on performance, increase on the recovery of abandoned carts, and higher value per transaction.
Beez has now about 90,000 users who have made a total of 3 million transactions so far. One of the latest options introduced in the application is Beez Pay, which wants to motivate users to abandon the idea of buying various goods by accessing credit products and to instead purchase them through a savings process. Their app is available for Android and iOS.
“We are now looking for investors who can join us in our next round of fundraising where we plan to raise £2 million in the UK by October-November 2019, and also consultants with a background in e-commerce, tax and legal in financial institutions field, M&A, VC funds, or other areas of expertise impacting our company, that can join our advisory board,” said Cramba.
This sounds like a naive bullshit. Having 2.5m in sales and raising only 250k eur? Something smells really bad here.
The amount of capital raised is not directly correlated with how well a company is doing. And maybe/probably the founders just didn’t want to raise more at this point.