Japanese crowdfunding site Campfire secures $3M to launch social lending service

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Image credit: Campfire

See the original story in Japanese.

Tokyo-based Campfire, the Japanese crowdfunding site which was recently reported to expand into the social lending space, officially announced today that it has fundraised 330 million yen (about $2.9 million) in the latest round. Participating investors are D4V (by Ideo and Genuine Startups), GMO Internet (TSE:9449), SMBC Venture Capital, East Ventures, iSGS Investment Works, Suneight Investment, Septeni Holdings (TSE:4293), DeNA (TSE:2432) and Freakout Holdings (TSE:6094) in addition to two individual investors including Mamoru Taniya.

Coinciding with the funds, Campfire names Mamoru Taniya, who is known as the founder and chairman of Japanese robo-advisory startup Money Design as well as an early-stage investor in Lifenet Insurance (TSE:7157), its new chairman while Yusuke Sato (CEO of Freakout Holdings) and Antonio Kamiya (CTO of Fujisan Magazine Service, TSE:3138) are appointed as outside directors. In addition, Hiroue Harada, who won the data scientist of the year award, now joins the team as Chief Information Officer.

Image credit: Campfire

At this time around, the company published an infographics (see above) on how much money they have offered to crowdfunding projects through the platform, seeing over 1.6 billion yen (over $13.8 million) offered in total compared to 700 million yen (about $6 million) in the first four years since the launch back in June of 2011.

Translated by Masaru Ikeda