HomeEstonia-StartupsTallinn-based EstateGuru snaps up €5.8 million to grow its property-backed loans marketplace

Tallinn-based EstateGuru snaps up €5.8 million to grow its property-backed loans marketplace

Today EstateGuru, a pan-European marketplace for short-term, property-backed loans, has announced the successful closure of its Series A funding round, with investments coming from Switzerland, United Kingdom, Czechia, Austria, Germany and Cyprus.

The lead investor for the round is TMT Investments Plc, a UK VC, and a public company that was also an early investor in both Bolt and Pipedrive. Among other VCs, there are the Swiss VCs Verve Ventures and Swiss Immo Lab, and J&T IB and Capital Markets, the investment banking arm of the Czech investment bank J&T.

Founded in 2013, EstateGuru aims to break down the barriers to investing in secured property loans, making it no longer just a luxury only available to the ‘wealthy and well-connected’. At the same time, it helps entrepreneurs and visionaries in the property development business who struggle with the ‘one-size-fits all’ solutions offered by banks and major financial institutions at the same time. Now more than half a decade later, the team has facilitated more than 2500 loans worth in excess of €380 million.

The startup’s new round of funding follows its successful equity fundraising round on the Seedrs platform in May this year, which exceeded the initial target by 260%, and hit its target within just four days. EstateGuru has been thriving thanks to retail investors’ support for the business model since the very beginning of the company, with 41% of new investors coming from referrals and 90% of investors doing so repeatedly. The team states one in two borrowers return to EstateGuru in five years to take out on average six loans.

“We have an ambitious technology and expansion roadmap for the next few years, and the success of this fundraising round will position us perfectly to deliver on this and continue providing all investors and borrowers with the very best real estate financing platform. We are developing a modern ecosystem for market participants and believe that very soon, traditional financiers will also prefer to use our platform in order to stay competitive. The fact that the same investors who have invested in two of Estonia’s leading startups, Pipedrive and Bolt, have now chosen to put their faith in EstateGuru is the perfect affirmation that our business model is robust and that we are ready to seriously accelerate our growth,” said Marek Pärtel, CEO and Co-Founder of EstateGuru.

“We are happy to support EstateGuru in the new round. It solves important problems – attracting money to real estate and at the same time making it possible to invest investors’ funds at a profit and at the most modern level”, said Artyom Inyutin, Co-founder & Head of Investments, TMT Investments.

“There is a significant SME financing gap in Europe and a strong investor appetite for high-yield investment products. EstateGuru is in a perfect position to take advantage of these two trends and become a global leader in real-estate backed lending,” added Joāo Duarte from Verve Ventures / Swiss Immo Lab.

Charlotte Tucker
Charlotte Tucker
Charlotte is the previous Editor at EU-Startups.com. She spends her time scouting the next big story, managing our contributor team, and getting excited about social impact ventures. She has previously worked as a Communications Consultant for number of European Commission funded startup projects.
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