Barcelona Investment News: Startup BoatBureau closed a round of €700.000

The boat rental platform BoatBureau now has the wind at it’s back. The Barcelona startup just closed a round of €700.000 from business angels connected to the IESE investment fund for business ideas.

Prior to this funding round, BoatBureau had received only public investment from Enisa, ICO and the regional fund IFEM.

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Improving their web-platform

BoatBureau explains that the new funding will go to technological improvements on their platform. Their goal is to offer rental services that are 100% automated.

Since their launch in 2011, the startup has seen a remarkable growth. In 2014, sales grew more than 200% compared to the year before, and the sales for 2015 is expected to be high, and to fold 2014. In total they have had a turnover of around €3 million since the launch.

Josep Mercadé, Co-Founder and CEO of BoatBureau is more than happy about the round of funding.

“We are very pleased with the round. Right now we have 4.500 boats online, but by the beginning of 2016 we will have 9.000 boats on the platform, and 16.000 boats in our database”, he says.

The necessary partners

The round of investment, which was BoatBureaus first, was conducted by the startup accelerator Intelectium in Barcelona.

Mercadé explain that they needed partners, not only for the finance, but also for the experience going forward.

“Without the leadership of Intelectium this search process for new partners would have been extremely complicated and long”

The company now operates in over 100 countries and will further broaden its global reach in the coming months.

 

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