e-crowd, providing equity-type crowdfunding services, announced on the 13th raising approximately 570 million yen through equity and debt financing. Multiple individual investors and W fund participated in the equity investment.
The company has supported funding primarily for seed and early-stage startups through ECF (Equity Crowdfunding) service provision. They have achieved results with about 40 companies totaling over 1 billion yen. Based on these successes, this funding will accelerate preparation of new services matching middle and later-stage startups with individual investors.
Recent funding examples through their platform include Neusignal Therapeutics developing Alzheimer’s dementia treatment drugs, Hatake Hotke developing rice paddy weeding robots, and GS2, where former Nintendo engineers provide cloud services for game developers. Through the company’s services, these startups have achieved broad funding from individual investors.
The startup funding market remained strong in 2024, with increasing large-scale funding deals and foreign prominent VCs entering the Japanese market. However, new fund establishment amounts, the main funding source, are trending downward, increasing the need for new funding supply models supporting sustainable startup growth.
Additionally, while stock prices in TSE Prime and Standard Markets are trending upward, the Growth Market for startups is struggling. Many companies are choosing to go public without sufficient preparation, with cases of post-listing growth stagnation becoming apparent.
In this situation, e-crowd plans to contribute to startups securing sufficient growth funding while unlisted by expanding funding supply models connecting startups and individual investors through new services. They aim to build a comprehensive platform supporting startup funding across all stages from founding through pre-IPO.
via PR TIMES
