BlueVine, a leading online provider of everyday financing to small businesses, has secured a strategic investment from Citi Ventures. Financial terms of the investment have not been disclosed.
Citi Ventures' investment will support BlueVine’s growth as it continues to scale its cloud-based working capital financing platform for small businesses and expand into new market segments. Citi Ventures makes strategic investments in dynamic startups and partners with its portfolio companies and Citi's global businesses to accelerate their growth and ability to scale. This represents a follow-on investment to BlueVine’s USD40 million Series C financing in January 2016.
“With a portfolio that includes Square, Betterment, DocuSign and Optimizely, Citi Ventures invests in segment leaders that are reinventing industries,” says Eyal Lifshitz, founder and CEO of BlueVine. “We are honored to have them as a strategic investor and believe this further validates BlueVine as the leading small business solution for working capital financing. Citi’s industry expertise and large customer base make them an ideal partner as we accelerate our efforts to make working capital more accessible for small business owners.”
Other recent developments at BlueVine include the appointment of former Google Capital manager Ana Sirbu to vice president of finance and strategy and the launch of Flex Credit, a platform expansion beyond invoice factoring to offer small businesses a revolving line of credit. BlueVine is currently on track to fund more than USD200 million in working capital in 2016.
“BlueVine’s platform addresses pain points like cash flow management for the growing market of small businesses in need of financing,” says Arvind Purushotham, Managing Director and Co-head of Venture Capital at Citi Ventures. “We’re excited to champion and accelerate the growth of a company that is setting the industry standard in providing expanded access to capital on an easy-to-use digital platform.”
