 | |
| Formerly | MarketFinance Limited, MarketInvoice Limited |
|---|---|
| Type | Private |
| Industry | Business lending, financial technology |
| Founded | 29 July 2010 |
| Founder | Anil Stocker, Ilya Kondrashov, Charles Delingpole |
| Headquarters | 48-50 Scrutton Street, London EC2A 4XQ |
| Website | kriya |
Kriya (formerly MarketFinance Limited and MarketInvoice Limited [1] [2] ) is a British business finance lender, specialising in invoice finance, business loans and embedded finance. It is described as a FinTech company. [3]
The company is based in London. To date, it has facilitated approximately £20 billion of B2B payments and advanced approximately £3 billion in credit to UK SMEs. [4]
Anil Stocker has served as CEO and Cofounder since the company began and Ilya Kondrashov as Cofounder and Chairman of the Risk Committee. Giles Andrews OBE was appointed the first chairman of the company in 2017. [5]
In 2013 the British Business Bank, began funding businesses through their platform.
On 12 November 2019, MarketInvoice was renamed MarketFinance as it launched a new business loans product. [6]
In 2021 the company was accredited under the Recovery Loan Scheme (RLS). It was also accreddited with under the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme (CBILS), having lent £250m to companies across the UK.[ citation needed ]
In November 2022 the company was renamed to Kriya.
Kriya's history of obtaining finance is as follows: [7] [8] [9]
| Year | Amount | Investors | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2011 | £930,000 | anonymous | seed funding |
| 2015 | £6m | Northzone, and Paul Forster | series A [10] |
| 2016 | £7.2m [11] | Northzone, and MCI Partners | |
| 2019 | £26m | Barclays bank, Santander Innoventures, Northzone and Viola Credit. [12] | series B |
| 2021 | £280m | debt and equity fundraise | |
| 2022 | £100m | Deutsche Bank [13] | debt financing |
In 2017 the company released a Confidential Invoice Discounting facility that would allow businesses to upload their entire invoice book to borrow against. [14] In 2018 Kriya launched a business loan product followed by an embedded finance product in 2021. [15]
Investors fund businesses through Kriya's platform. These investors include institutional investors as well as regional funds and banks.
In 2018 Portugal's bank Banco BNI Europa and the German Varengold Bank announced that they would lend £90m and £45m respectively through Kriya's platform. [16]
In 2018 Kriya announced a partnership with Barclays bank to provide invoice finance to Barclays' business customers. [17]
Kriya was featured in the Sunday Times Tech Track 100 ‘Ones to Watch’ list in 2017 and 2018. [18] It won an Excellence Award for Most Innovative Invoice Financing Solutions in 2018. [19]
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