Viceversa, the startup that introduced revenue-based financing to Italy to support the growth of digital companies, has announced the closing of a €10 million Series A financing round. The deal was led by CDP Venture Capital through the Service Tech Sub-Fund of Corporate Partners I Fund, whose limited corporate partners include BNL – BNP Paribas along with important co-investors such as Azimut Libera Impresa SGR, Kairos Partners SGR, Italian Angels for Growth, Fabrick, Raffaele Terrone (founder of Scalapay) and Paolo Galvani (founder of Moneyfarm).
This new fundraising follows the seed round closed by the fintech in late 2021, which was led by Fasanara Capital, and brings Viceversa total funding amount to €33 million in equity and debt financing.
Launched in November 2021 by Matteo Masserdotti and Pedro Salvi, Viceversa operates through offices in Milan and Dublin targeting companies that run an online business such as marketplaces, B2C and B2B e-commerce or subscription services, with the goal of making their growth sustainable. To do this, Viceversa introduced to Italy has been one of the first European companies introducing revenue-based financing, a tool for accessing fast and flexible capital, characterized by sharing a percentage of the financed company’s gross revenue to repay the amounts invested. It is an alternative financial solution that has gained a lot of popularity in recent years and provides companies with the capital they need and enables them to continue growing sustainably.
Viceversa’s proposition is completed with an advanced analytics and insights platform that, by connecting the company’s sales and marketing channels (Amazon, Meta, Stripe, etc.), allows the monitoring of key marketing KPIs, enabling companies to be in full control of their performance at all times. The latest product is an embedded finance solution designed for eCommerce and Marketplace leaders.
The selection of investments, as well as the creation of insights, are completely data-driven and based on proprietary machine learning and artificial intelligence models. In less than a year and a half since its launch, Viceversa has reached a total portfolio value of more than 25 million euros, with clients in 6 different countries (Italy, Germany, Austria, Ireland, Switzerland and the UK), and an average growth rate recorded by companies using the platform, exceeding 150%. The team, between offices in Milan and Dublin, counts more than 30 people with backgrounds in areas such as finance, data science, software engineering, marketing and risk management.
Matteo Masserdotti, Co-counder and CEO of Viceversa, stated: “The first full year of activity has allowed us to establish our product in six countries in Europe. Now we are ready to enter our next phase of expansion, always focused on the development of data-driven solutions to better support the growth of companies of the future. One of these, our new white label solution, will become the cornerstone for many eCommerce and Marketplace leaders willing to generate more value for their customers precisely at a time like this, when companies are facing extreme difficulty raising capital. Our technology is creating an extraordinary impact, both in terms of access to capital and performance.”
Laura Scaramella, Partner at the lead investor CDP Venture Capital, commented: “We are very pleased to have led an important series A investment round in Viceversa, a promising Italian fintech company with a pan-European footprint. It has been growing at a strong rate and is spreading also in Italy a very innovative financing solution that fills a gap in the offer of traditional financial service providers, that of marketing expenses, one of the main growth drivers in the sector. Our investment in Viceversa is particularly representative of the strategic positioning of ServiceTech, a corporate venture capital reality verticalized on the tertiary sector with a focus on financial services. It is characterized by a close collaboration between the investment team and our corporate partners aimed at supporting them in their digital transition as well as in their dialogue with an expanding digital client base.”
