Eco-cleaning firm Delphis Eco seeks investors to raise £400,000 for expansion
Ecological cleaner manufacturer Delphis Eco is seeking to raise £400,000 in investment funds via crowdfunding website Seedrs.
The British-based company is inviting any potential investors to get involved, to help it expand its infrastructure and marketing, and boost its position within the commercial and retail cleaning markets following its signing with goods giant Unilever.
Using the Delphis Eco page on the Seedrs website, Seedrs investors can give anything from £100 upwards to the group, although the average transaction on Seedrs overall ranges from £500-20,000 per person. If the target is not reached, the petitioning company receives nothing.
South African entrepreneur Dorothy Botsi is said to be among those to have already invested. The total at the time of writing was at £124,840, or 31% of the overall amount.
The company states its value at £7.6m, and is offering 5% equity to all investors. The bid closes in six days' time, and investors can donate here.
A crowdfunding platform designed for business, Seedrs is a space connecting professional start-ups and serious investors. Although the main idea is the same as other crowd-funding platforms such as Kickstarter (in that it raises money from various public sources), it differs considerably from those in that Seedrs investors buy shares in the company, and offer larger amounts, rather than simply donating smaller amounts in exchange for prizes or small rewards (as happens on some other crowdfunding sites).
Delphis Eco has stated that just 1% of the £900m cleaning products market currently focuses on ecologically-friendly products, but estimated that the share will grow to around 10% over the next five years. It added that its own revenue had grown 10 times' over in the past six years.
Chief executive Mark Jankovich, who bought the company in 2008, said: "The need for sustainable products is fast becoming a staple part of contracts and central to the tendering process in all significant UK business operations. With this increasing demand for ecological products, our business is undergoing a rapid expansion programme."
Delphis Eco currently supplies cleaning products to clients across the hotel and catering industries, alongside others such as healthcare, education, and transport.
Although not on the same scale, another hospitality business managed to reach its fundraising target recently, when Cheshire's Sticky Walnut restaurant (run by head chef Gary Usher) raised over £100,000 in a month to help it build a second site.
Usher used the rather more informal platform Kickstarter to raise his money, and promoted the exercise via Twitter and a humorous video. Rather than invite share investors, he asked for backers, and hit his target in early November after just 30 days, having received 891 bids of value between £10 and £5,000.
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