Crowdfunded investments more than double due to Covid-propelled savings

Irish start-ups have raised over €6 million from crowdfunding campaigns locally in the first eight months of the year as individual investors put some of their Covid savings to good use.

This compares to €1.3 million raised in the same period in 2020 on Spark Crowdfunding and less than €1.1 million for the corresponding months two years ago.

The news comes as Spark Crowdfunding reported record sign-ups for its platform during the first six months of 2021 with its investor database growing by over 140 per cent.

Record growth

It attributed the record growth in part to the public looking for new ways to deploy higher-than-expected levels of savings, as a result of Covid lockdown restrictions.

Ireland is ‘worst bottleneck’ for enforcing EU data privacy law – ICCL

---

Apple vs Epic ruling is just one battle in an ongoing war

---

China to break up Ant’s Alipay and force creation of separate loans app

---

Cybersecurity start-up 4Securitas raises €2m from Italian VC fund

---

"Early-stage companies looking for new venture funding have been able to access more funds from the crowd than in ordinary economic circumstances," said Spark Crowdfunding chief executive Chris Burge.

Through crowdfunding platforms such as Spark, individuals can invest from as little as €100 in early-stage start-ups.

Enterprise Ireland high-potential start-up (HPSU) companies featured strongly in the list of companies using equity crowdfunding to match the funds offered by the State agency.

Platform beneficiaries

Among the companies to secure investment through the company's platform was sports technology platform ASX, which raised €2.2 million in less than a month through crowdfunding. The company is founded by Paddy Power, the public face of Ireland's biggest bookmaker.

Digital health start-up Akkure Genomics easily surpassed its €500,000 crowdfunding campaign target just days after launching the initiative and went on to secure almost €1.2 million.

Revenue operations start-up Tacenda raised over €658,000; athleisure firm FitPink raised €356,0000; remote working platform Bowsy raised almost €358,000; and FinTech company Pitpit Global raised €288,000.