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iwoca was featured on BBC Radio 4's Money Box Live with Emma Jones (Enterprise Nation) recommending it as a great website offering an alternative to the banks. The discussion starts 01:35 into the programme.
iwoca, which provides short-term loans to online retailers based in the UK, announced today that it has raised £5 million (about $8.2 million) from Global Founders Capital, a new private investment fund launched by the Samwer brothers of Rocket Internet fame, and Luxembourg-based Redline Capital Management. All of iwoca’s existing investors also returned for the current round, which brings the total iwoca has raised so far to about £7 million (about $11.5 million). The startup, which is based in London, says it will use its latest funding to scale up its UK operations and expand into Europe.
Napoleon once described Britain as a “nation of shopkeepers”. More than 200 years later, that description is as apt as ever – but these days, more of those shops are to be found online than on the high street, where vacancy rates remain stubbornly high despite an accelerating economic recovery.
Early this week, I had the absolute pleasure of speaking with Christoph Rieche, the CEO and co-founder of iwoca, a start-up offering fast-growing ecommerce businesses access to the working capital needed to invest in stock, staff, infrastructure or technology.
iwoca [...] won the attention and crucial votes of delegates at Wired's inaugural financial conference after pitching its business "Dragons' Den-style" to attendees, alongside over 20 competing startups.
Christoph Rieche, chief executive officer of iwoca Ltd. discusses his company which offers short term loans to sellers on websites such as Amazon and eBay.
What's the biggest challenge for a start-up which lends to eBay traders who can’t get funding? Funnily enough, it’s getting funding. Christoph Rieche, the CEO and co-founder of Iwoca – which stands for instant working capital – knows first-hand the difficulties faced by his customers. "If I went to a bank today there would be zero chance of me getting a loan that would make a difference for us," he says. "The business has been incorporated for less than a year and trading for less than six months. Banks don’t work with companies like us on the scale that we require."
It’s an impressive start for iwoca, finance they’ve made available has resulted in an additional £1,000,000 of stock being purchased and sold online. Whilst that on it’s own won’t make a dent in the Chancellors budget deficit, for small businesses it demonstrates the need for finance which high street banks simply aren’t making available.
iwoca, the only provider of short term finance to online retailers in the UK, has announced that it will now offer online retailers a maximum loan value of £50,000. The new maximum loan amount replaces iwoca’s previous £20,000 limit.
Customers will still be able to choose a repayment term of between one day and six months and benefit from free early repayments.
Coupled with the rise of social networking, technological changes are allowing 'fintech' entrepreneurs to cut out banks entirely. iwoca, for example, analyses all of the data available from marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon, and is able to determine whether an applicant is eligible for a loan or not within five minutes.
There are over 300,000 UK businesses selling online in an ecommerce market worth €50 billion. In the past five years 367,000 people have become their own boss, taking the total to 4.2m, according to figures from the Office of National Statistics.
Christoph Rieche, CEO and founder of iwoca says a new Armchair Economy is propping up the ailing UK economy.
iwoca, which specialises in short-term loans to marketplace sellers, has lent its first million and won investment of £2m, less than a year after it opened for business. Internet Retailing talked to iwoca co-founder and chief executive Christoph Rieche to catch up on how the company has developed so far – and where it goes from here.
Is it time for the Government to stand back and let the market open up to more competition and a greater array of alternative sources of finance?
A new lender is looking to fund the army of spare room entrepreneurs who make a living selling items on eBay a rare piece of positive news amid the ongoing gloom surrounding access to finance. iwoca, a self-funded start-up formed by two former investment bankers in Fulham, south-west London, offers loans of up to £10,000 for online sellers in need of working capital.
