© 2020 – 2024 AEA3 WEB | AEAƎ United Kingdom News
AEA3 WEB | AEAƎ United Kingdom News
Image default
IT

London-based Cheeky Panda raises £2M to promote the greenest way to clean your bum

London-founded, The Cheeky Panda, the five-year-old company specialising in bamboo hygiene products, has become the first pure secondary share sale campaign to be listed on the Seedrs platform.

Following a hugely successful 2020 with 200% growth and sales in excess of £5million, The Cheeky Panda founders and early angel investors are releasing £2 million of additional equity onto Seedrs Secondary Market in order to meet market demand and reward the brand’s loyal community of everyday investors and attract new shareholders.

The first £1.2 million of shares sold out in less than a week, with a further £800,000 worth of shares still available to purchase.

As investor appetite to buy and sell shares in unlisted, private market companies with high growth continues, The Cheeky Panda’s decision to release an additional £2 million worth of share onto Seedrs’ Secondary Market brings liquidity for The Cheeky Panda’s founders and some of its earliest angel investors.

This move will provide an opportunity for new investors within Seedrs community and beyond to buy shares in The Cheeky Panda into the businesses without waiting for a new fundraising campaign.

Seedrs has helped Cheeky Panda raise over £6 million in the last three years via three primary share issues, and the business remains one of the most popular shares to be traded amongst Seedrs investors when the Secondary Market exchange opens each month.

Chris Forbes, co-founder of The Cheeky Panda said: “Our business has gone from strength to strength and the last 12 months, we now have thousands of 5* reviews and with new products and market launches across, Europe, USA and China we have achieved only a fraction of our potential. With the demand for shares in B Corps and ethical high growth businesses with ESG at its core investor appetite in our business has never been higher. By releasing some equity now it means we and a few of our angels don’t have to wait another few years for an IPO to benefit from the high growth curve. The Cheeky Panda is a disruptor it’s great to be the first to do Seedrs first pure secondary market transaction. It will open up the opportunity for other entrepreneurs in high demand high growth businesses to get liquidity ahead of gong public or a PE deal. To sell over £1.2m in just over a week shows the product works and the demand is there for trading in private market shares.”

Jeff Kelisky, CEO at Seedrs, says: “We aim to become the largest and most trusted marketplace for private equity investment providing alternative paths for investment to the typical VC-Exit cycle. Our secondary market delivers liquidity to a previously highly illiquid asset class and is ideal for growth businesses, like The Cheeky Panda, that is balancing the capable and seeing investors looking to recognise success, shore up liquidity and exit early. Our platform makes trading for investors and founders as easy, as trusted, and eventually as fast as a public market.”

The Cheeky Panda is a B Corp with a range of 20 bamboo products across Household, Baby, Beauty and Office Supplies. Their products are stocked in over 25 countries with leading retailers such as Amazon, Ocado, Boots, Monoprix (France), Carrefour (UAE), Good Eggs and Rite Aid (USA).

The company has grown in turnover from £500k in 2018, £1.7m in 2019, £5.2m in 2020 and projected £10m for 2021. To date the business has raised £6m from investors and is still majority-owned by its founders Chris Forbes and Julie Chen.

It has celebrity endorsements from Joanna Lumley, Richard Branson, and Russel Brand and has featured on Good Morning and BBC News and is hotly tipped as one of the first pure-play green company to IPO by UBS and Panmure Gordons Investment Banking Teams.

Acting as a private investment platform, Seedrs secondary market allows investors and founders to cash out their shares for liquidity reasons 5-10 years before a traditional exit. It lets them take advantage of the success seen to date and a rise in share value. Seedrs Secondary Market had its most successful year to date in 2020 as it delivered nearly 14,000 investor exits, with total investor profit growing 260%.

The Seedrs Secondary Market now offers up to 400 companies on any given month, including The Cheeky Panda, during each monthly open and averages nearly half a million pounds of trades during that week.

Since its launch in 2012, Seedrs has funded over 1,200 deals, with over £1 billion invested on the platform to date.

Business that have successfully raised funds with Seedrs include Revolut, Perkbox, Wealthify (sold to Aviva), Tandem, FreeAgent (sold to RBS), Allplants, Stamplay (sold to Apple), Chapel Down, Assetz Capital, Courier (sold to Mailchimp), THIS, Humble Grape, JAJA Finance and Mindful Chef (sold to Nestle).

Seedrs is backed by leading European institutional investors as well as over 4,600 of its own customers.

The post London-based Cheeky Panda raises £2M to promote the greenest way to clean your bum appeared first on UKTN (UK Tech News).

Related posts

How datacentre power growth is leaving Dublin in distress

AEA3

This startup offering one-stop solution for your storage problems is coming to the UK with €52M funding

AEA3

InfoSum raises $15m Series A

AEA3