Our client is a global financial technology company that provides an innovative, online comparison service for SMEs to access a panel of major forex payment traders. Of the estimated $12 trillion in payments made every year by businesses trading internationally, an estimated 10% is lost to bank fees and SMEs account for nearly 60% of this trade.
By enacting multiple affiliate partnerships with forex payment specialists, our client is competing against the local banking infrastructure, enabling businesses to save considerably on forex transfer costs.
With £750,000 already invested by angels and founders, our client approached us to raise working capital to ramp up sales and marketing activity. We knew this high-volume, low-margin business would appeal to our investors having £6 million in transactions since launch, a consistent 15% growth per month and a revenue trajectory of £38million by 2017 (EBITDA at 10%) – an exponential growth opportunity.
We jumped into action and shortlisted investors from our network, specifically a number of our investors who are active in this particular sector. Within a short time, an investor made a proposal along with his colleague, a World Bank Senior Executive, to join the board of the company and to bring with them several large African and Asian corporations, with whom they had influence, to escalate the traffic onsite to the point where the resulting revenues generated will negate the need for a further fund raise down the line.
In the meantime, we continue to introduce other investors who are Africa-friendly in order to swell their war chest. Our client now has a huge jump-start for marketing and sales and the investor team we introduced are galvanizing the project.
Coming from Africa myself, I know the huge potential here for this service for the Third World; this company has the potential to expand its product range as the brand becomes better. As a business it has tremendous potential, the more so with one of our investors in this company now resident in Nairobi. Watch this space – it’s a good one.
Associate Director
Beer & Young
