Aswani commented:
“As proven by TransferWise and Bondora, Estonia has high potential for fintech companies and Investly helps to redesign the way how the SMEs are financed. In my view, Investly has the potential to expand to the new markets through technical integration and innovation.”
Siim Maivel, CEO of Investly, added:
“From its inception, Investly has been aiming international markets and the support of investors like Sonny Aswani helps us to achieve the expansion goals. A number of strong small businesses is ready to consider alternative’s to bank funding, both in Estonia and other countries.”
As well as being an equity investor Aswani will also be putting money to work via the platform. In Aswani’s view, Investly’s portfolio offers a number of interesting investment opportunities, he noted:
“Having seen how the platform operates, I recommend to consider Investly as a new tool for financing SMEs and getting return for that. The funds go directly to the economy and expected returns outperform many other financial instruments.”
By offering both invoice factoring and P2P business lending Investly sets itself up in a unique position among the alternative finance platforms in Europe. Just after its launch in August 2014 we sat down with Investly and discussed their ambitious vision for the platform, including having cross-border functionality from the outset. Crucially they noted that Estonia is a highly adaptive market, one that is technologically advanced and so is highly receptive to alternative finance. The Investly model of a diversified platform, providing different product groups, is one that we are likely to see more of, as platforms push to drive up origination volumes.
