Lakeba unveils fund for tech start-ups

Lakeba has launched the Scale-Up Fund, which will look for businesses that have experienced rapid growth but require significant investment in capital or resources.

According to Lakeba, the fund would provide capital, operational knowledge, legal and risk guidance, marketing support, financial management and mentoring.

The technology company said it has made two investments of capital, capabilities and resources thus far in scale-ups, including in Australian-based appreci (which is an app designed to enable users to send digital messages of gratitude and a redeemable gift of a warm beverage to others), and US-based music streaming service LÜM.

For appreci, Lakeba said it supported the business in its distribution by leveraging its partnership with Microsoft to integrate the app with Microsoft team.

For LÜM, Lakeba said it provided capital and development capabilities to scale the social media and music streaming platform.

Commenting on the fund, Lakeba Group CEO Giuseppe Porcelli said he believes that the fund would help more entrepreneurs and their businesses to scale in terms of technology, geography and personnel.

“When building a business, it’s common to experience growing pains, especially if you have built a great product generating real demand,” Mr Porcelli said.

“Rather than have your business splitting at the seams, Lakeba can help provide the perfect fit, tailoring our investment to suit your specific needs, offering the support, guidance and resources to help scale-ups reach their full potential.”

The launch of the fund has followed Lakeba supporting fragmented property ownership platform Bricklet when it launched in 2019, during which it said it has supported Bricklet in selling over $15 million worth of bricklets.

The platform recently completed its Series A capital raise at a value of $28 million, and launched a buy now, pay later offering for on-title property ownership.

Lakeba, which was formed in 2013, has built 17 business and raised over $23 million independently. It has also guided three of these businesses to exits totalling more than $20 million.

The company currently has 12 active ventures in its portfolio, and said it has achieved a compound annual growth rate of 84 per cent between 2016 and 2019.

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Malavika Santhebennur is the features editor on the mortgages titles at Momentum Media.

Before joining the team in 2019, Malavika held roles with Money Management and Benchmark Media. She has been writing about financial services for the past six years.