Plum, the world’s first AI-powered money management chatbot, has today announced its second equity crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs.
The fintech recently announced the upcoming launch of its new investment tool that promises to give users ultimate control of where their money goes and will give past and new investors early access to the feature.
Plum’s second equity crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs comes one year on from the first; it attracted just under 1,000 investors raising almost £1,000,000 in July 2017. Plum has since grown from 22,000 users to an impressive 130,000, doubled the team, and worked with the likes of TransferWise to bring visibility to customers on their lifetime costs of FX. Most notably, Plum recently launched Plum Investments, the first theme-based investment product in the UK where users can choose to invest their savings in trends. Funds from this Seedrs investment round will be used to launch a stand-alone mobile app and accelerate their European growth.
Rather than just basing an investment on risk appetite like traditional online investment opportunities on the market, Plum Investments allows users to invest and grow their money via themes they truly believe in. The company launched the product with three themes; Tech, Emerging Markets and Ethical Companies. Other themes the platform will add in the coming months include AI, Nutrition and Robotics. In what is believed to be an industry first, Plum Investments will allow users to make investment starting from as little as £1, with the hopes of making investing accessible to everyone. Plum have seen an unprecedented demand for the product, before it has even launched, and so have installed a waitlist.
Backed by Demitrios Zoppos, one of the co-founders of OneFineStay, and renowned early stage venture fund 500 Startups, Plum launched in January 2017 and has been on a mission to make users financially better off ever since. Using AI, the platform analyses users’ bank accounts, saving money for them automatically so they don’t have to think about it. Plum is on a run rate to save users £50m in the next year.
Victor Trokoudes, CEO and Co-Founder of Plum, said: “Since the beginning, Plum has been driven by a very clear mission; Make people Better off, and that to us means making people have more money than they used to. The development of Plum Investments is a step closer to completing our mission. By making investments available and engaging for everyone, people can take the first step to start investing and not feel this is something reserved for the rich, whilst also start growing their savings responsibly.
We are delighted to be returning to Seedrs. We had a brilliant reception from investors last year, which helped fuel our exciting growth over the last 12 months, so we look forward to welcoming them all back again and will hopefully bring on some new investors to take us to the next stage of our mission.”
Demitris Zoppos, Co-Founder and former COO of OneFineStay and Plum investor, commented: “Plum Investments is a game changing product in retail investing; it will open up the stock markets to all retail investors - not just the ones who have traditionally been able to afford it. It also comes at a time when interest earned on savings in cash are the lowest levels seen in twenty years. This focus on financial inclusion and education is one of the key things that attracted me to Plum in the first instance. I have been delighted with the team since my initial investment, and I see a huge demand in the market for their product as evidenced by the impressive user growth over the past 12 months. I very much look forward to what they are going to do next.”