Juni, the financial companion for ecommerce entrepreneurs, has secured $52M in funding led by EQT Ventures, with participation from FJ labs and other existing investors to add to the $21M already raised from their Series-A round in late June this year.
This boosts Juni’s Series A round to $73M and takes the total funding to date to $76M. EQT Ventures joins Partners of DST Global, Felix Capital and Cherry Ventures in backing Juni to disrupt online banking for internet-first business customers. The company will use the funds to triple the number of its employees and launch an industry-first, fully integrated credit line product to their users.
Founded in June 2020 in Gothenburg, Sweden, co-founders Samir El-Sabini (CEO), Jonathan Sanders (COO), and Anders Orsedal (CTO) have a winning combination of payment, banking, fintech and technical developer experience between them. As part of Juni’s mission to help ecommerce businesses grow faster, and starting with an initial roll-out in the UK, customers will soon be able to access short-term credit. This new offering will give entrepreneurs better visibility and control over their cash flow, while eliminating the arduous admin usually associated with credit repayments.
“Everything we do is designed to make life for internet entrepreneurs easier,” said Samir El-Sabini, Founder and CEO at Juni. “We’re internet entrepreneurs too, after all, and before launching Juni, we were in the industry that we cater to today! We understand their pain points and business needs in a way that traditional banking can’t, which in turn means we’re able to offer them a credit product that actually makes sense for them.”
The follow-on investment from EQT Ventures will allow Juni to build their product entirely in-house, in stark contrast with traditional banking platforms, which tend to offer credit solutions from outside partners. This means that Juni will be able to provide a fast, customer-centric offering, specifically tailored for ecommerce businesses to access short-term credit. To support this, Juni is accelerating its world-wide hiring of top talent for its credit team, with a plan to recruit 120 more employees in the next 12 months.
Ted Persson, Partner at EQT Ventures, stated: “Juni is the fastest growing fintech we’ve ever seen, by a long stretch. The company has hit an impressive average weekly growth rate of 80% in just five months, and we're hearing great things from digitally-native entrepreneurs. The fact that we've known Samir for a long time, and rate him highly made the investment decision easy. We’re excited to help Juni bring a new kind of credit product to the market, disrupting banking platforms for businesses even further.”
Fabrice Grinda, Founding Partner at venture fund FJ Labs, added: “We invest actively in macro-trends, and powering the massive shift to ecommerce has been an integral part of our investments strategy for a number of years. Juni is a game-changing enabler for ecommerce and it is only natural for us to support their journey.”
In June this year, Juni raised a $21.5M Series A round led by Partners of DST Global and Felix Capital. The company counts several prominent business angels amongst its early investors, including NA-KD.com founder and CEO, Jarno Vanhatapio, and former iZettle Chief Communications Officer, Johan Bendz. Bendz has also joined Juni’s board alongside Niklas Thornestad, who was recently Klarna’s Global Head of Compliance.