It’s hard raising money as a consumer packaged goods (CPG) company, but one startup wants to make it easier. CircleUp, which already helps consumer brands raise millions in equity financing, is now going to issue loans to help smaller CPG companies raise working capital and avoid cash crunches.
Historically CircleUp has operated an equity investment marketplace focused specifically on emerging CPG companies. In essence, it lets new consumer businesses apply to raise funding on its platform, and gives investors a new way to find and back those businesses.
To do that, CircleUp has built a proprietary algorithm focused specifically on analyzing the industry. Called Helio, the system analyzes each company’s financial performance as well as its competitors’ performance, while also taking into account the strength of the company’s brand, its retail and online distribution, and the underlying team behind it.
To date, CircleUp has used the data collected from Helio to make recommendations to investors and help 243 companies have raised a total of $365 million in equity financing.
But not every CPG company wants to raise millions (or even hundreds of thousands) of dollars to fund its growth. Some are just in need of additional working capital, and in the CPG world and small and medium-sized business world in general, fundraising is hard to come by.
As a result, CircleUp is now applying its learnings from Helio to help extend lines of credit to companies just looking for smaller amounts of capital to finance their growing businesses.
With the launch of CircleUp Credit Advisors, it has begun…