Prospa, Australia’s leading online lender to small business, has secured $25 million in growth funding led by AirTree Ventures – Australia’s most successful tech-focused venture capital firm.
The investment comes after a period of significant growth for Prospa who is now the clear market leader for online lending to small businesses in Australia.
Prospa will use the funds to accelerate its market leadership: boosting technology, product expansion and distribution, ramping up talent acquisition and building a world-class brand.
Greg Moshal, Founder and joint CEO of Prospa said continued interest from top technology investors like Airtree, and the scale of their investment, recognises the difficulties small businesses have in accessing finance, and will support Prospa in its growth phase.
“We’re driving a fundamental change in the way 2 million small business owners in Australia access finance.
“We’ve now provided over 10,000 loans and put over $250m into the Australian small business economy. All the while maintaining our ability to wow our customers, which continues to be proven through a stellar customer satisfaction score of over 90%.
Why has Prospa attracted this funding?
AirTree Ventures’ managing partner, Craig Blair, said “Greg and Beau have built a world class team and are obsessing over how to solve customer problems in a better, faster way. They are exactly the kind of founders we want to partner with.”
“This is a coming of age of the fintech sector in Australia. Prospa is a real business solving a real problem, winning awards with tremendous customer and market feedback while achieving profitability from the very early days,” Mr Blair said.
Prospa passed $250 million in loan originations and has added a series of strategic partnerships with Westpac, Reckon and Mortgage Choice coming on board to offer Prospa’s small business loans to their customers.
Co-Founder and Joint CEO Beau Bertoli said “strong partnerships are key to Prospa’s rapid growth and future success.
“To reach more small business owners, we’ll continue to invest in partnerships with trusted brands who share our values of putting their small business customers first.
“Small businesses are the driving force of the Australian economy. We’ve solved a huge challenge of access to finance for them by building the best local lending platform, making it faster and easier to get a small business loan than it ever has been,” Bertoli said.