These latest funds will be used by Fasanara Capital to support further expansion of its global fintech ecosystem. Funds will be used to lend to the real economy, to either invoice receivables, working capital facilities, short term SME loans, and an array of specialty finance products.

The new funds follow Fasanara Capital’s $350m VC Fund which launched in mid-2022 and is dedicated to making equity investments in the next-generation of global fintech and Web3 pioneers. The mandate also helps Fasanara complement and complete its offering to fintech companies while giving its portfolio even greater resilience and diversity.
Bridging the gap

Launched in 2011, Fasanara Capital is a tech-enabled asset manager and Europe’s largest lender to fintech platforms. It’s also a material liquidity provider in crypto markets. It currently has a portfolio of equity exposures to 29 start-ups and scaling tech businesses, including: Stashfin, the fast-growing consumer lender in India; Scalapay, the Italian Buy Now Pay Later unicorn; Grover, Europe’s market leader in technology rentals, and FlexCar, the automotive flexible rental company built to make car ownership and usage as accessible and convenient as possible; and more.

Fasanara pioneered the opportunity in technology-driven lending to fintechs at the infancy of the market in Europe, before many others in this sector and its innovative approach recently saw Fasanara Capital named one of the fastest growing companies of 2022 by the Financial Times. Today, Fasanara has $4bn AUM and helps bridge the gap between credit-starved SMEs and European institutional investors looking to support new financial disruptors in ways that are sustainable, scalable, and empowered by data.

Investment in European fintechs is booming, there were 750 financing deals for European fintech companies in 2021, adding up to nearly €26 billion in investment. Additionally, four out of Europe’s top 10 most valuable tech companies in 2021 were fintechs. Meanwhile, Europe’s VCs invested a record $2.2 billion into cryptocurrency and DeFi start-ups in 2021.

Fasanara is perfectly poised to take advantage of this trend, as it is already Europe’s largest lender to fintech platforms. The fund manager estimates that across its fintech portfolio, it will see total ecosystem cumulative volumes of lending reach $45 billion in 2022 - across the Fasanara group, and via its portfolio companies in the payments and lending spaces. Existing investors in Fasanara Capital include some of Europe’s largest pension funds, the European Investment Fund, and some of Europe’s biggest insurance companies.

Fasanara Capital employs over 200 people in total, of which more than 130 work in the technology team focusing on software development and data science.

Francesco Filia, CEO of Fasanara Capital, said: “This marks another major milestone for Fasanara, as we continue to grow at a rapid pace, cementing our position as Europe’s largest provider of capital for fintech companies. This capital will help bolster our portfolio companies, by providing them with the certainty that they can access a range of financial products, should they need them. At a time when the wider capital market is experiencing such uncertainty, Fasanara’s portfolio companies know that they belong to an ecosystem which is strongly supported by some of the largest institutional investors in Europe and North America..”
Industry veterans in fintech & web3.0

What sets Fasanara Capital apart is its performance, track record and scale of operations in digital lending. From an operational standpoint, this means Fasanara can often deploy capital faster than other organizations as the fund often already has an existing relationship with the startup. With its track record of lending to and investing in both fintech and crypto sectors, Fasanara Capital is also confident in taking the lead investor role and making stronger-conviction equity commitments than generalist venture capital investors. Fasanara aims at consolidating its role as a market champion for the digital age of investing, being a veteran and playing at scale in both fintech and crypto at the same time.

Fasanara’s approach to investment has resulted in several early successes. Having only made its first early-stage equity investments three years ago, two of Fasanara Capital’s current portfolio companies have recently reached unicorn status after closing their most recent, respective funding rounds. ScalaPay, the Italian Buy Now, Pay Later firm led by Simone Mancini which Fasanara invested in at launch in 2019, recently became Italy’s first unicorn after raising a large Series B round. Similarly, Fasanara has been heavily involved in the growth of Europe’s market leader in technology rentals, Grover, investing in its Series B and Series C rounds. The German company, which provides electronics including smartphones on subscription plans, is now valued at over $1 billion after its latest funding round.