Company U’s staff
The fund provides a loan in US dollars to a venture firm doing advertising agency business (Company U). Company U is headquartered in Singapore, through Estonian affiliate company (Crowdcredit Estonia OÜ) of Crowdcredit Funding LLC.
Company U was established in Singapore in 2013. Before establishing Company U, its two founders had respectively established a marketing company, planning and providing brand strategies for large client companies located in Singapore from the 1990s, and an IT venture company engaged in digital marketing including website construction.
The two persons with such backgrounds cooperated to establish Company U with the goal of being a leading provider of comprehensive services at the digital marketing market in ASEAN region, where they saw the potential for a further growth in the future.
Since established, Company U has been offering, to client companies at digital marketing field, mixed services such as development of websites and mobile apps as well as planning of web campaigns on social media and brand strategies with new perspectives. The company is developing new services actively adopting innovative technologies and novel approaches.
As of November 2018, Company U employs 16 staff in Singapore, who have expertise in either of marketing, brand strategy or IT. Furthermore, the company has offices in 7 countries within the ASEAN region including Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines as well as 10 places in the United States with the employees totaling 150.
To start with, one of the strengths of Company U is a high level of credibility supported by two founders’ respective knowledge on brand strategy and digital marketing in the ASEAN region.
Specifically, the company is appreciated by clients especially in terms of its capacity to improve accuracy of marketing research by frequently performing a hypothesis-testing using IT and the speed of decision-making for flexible implementation of eye-catching promotions using cutting-edge technologies positively.
Furthermore, Company U has the excellence in consistently capturing the market trends, which enables it to develop and propose new services and meet new demands expected to grow. Moreover, the company consists a small number of selected staff, it is therefore able to offer such comprehensive and high-quality services at a reasonable price compared to large agencies. This is also a noteworthy strength of the company.
Among satisfied clients, those who have a strong presence are several leading companies. They are aware of the importance of marketing and global operation.
Each of these companies gradually diversifies product lineups and ways to approach customers understanding the fact that the six major ASEAN countries (ASEAN 6) are different from each other in terms of culture, religion, language and preference, and requires sophisticated marketing research for optimal decision making.
Company U retains these leading companies as clients by responding to their requests and is establishing its position in ASEAN 6 as an integrated digital branding company.
As stated above, Company U group’s main clients are multinational corporations engaged in a broad range of global businesses.
These clients include group companies of a major global manufacturer of general consumer goods and a major Japanese beverage company. They generally perform promotional activities several times a year, three to six months for each time. Because of this circumstance, in increasing sales of Company U, turning its existing clients into repeat clients has equal or superior importance to acquisition of new clients.
As for this matter, the customer retention rate of Company U exceeds 90%, which suggests that Company U enjoys high customer satisfaction. This can also be seen in the following story.
When one of its clients, Company A, was acquired by the major Company B, Company B noticed the reputation of Company U through Company A. That was good enough for Company B to decide that it would leave the marketing activities in the ASEAN Region to the discretion of Company U. Thus, Company B became a new client of Company U.
As seen in the above case, Company U steadily expands its customer base as it gains a solid reputation in the ASEAN region.
The Company U group had been unprofitable since established until the period ended June 2017 and then the company reported first profit in the January-June period of 2018.
The turnaround was attributable to a high customer retention rate as well as the acquisition of new clients led by the improvement to the Company U group’s brand value along with the above-mentioned good reputation from existing customers. Sales per client also increases because of clients’ active equity investment in ASEAN region. The company is expected to maintain and increase its profit, because of those supportive non- temporal factors.
We have explained above, from a positive viewpoint, the fact that Company U enjoys solid growth and has turned profitable in a recent accounting period. On the other hand, we additionally note that local private financial institutions are cautious in financing to Company U, considering it negative that the company has just turned into the black. With this in mind, we designed the fund for Company U to overcome its funding issue and achieve further business expansion by providing the company with funds.
The fund provides a loan to the rapidly growing venture firm. Objective appraisal of such company tends to substantially vary in a short period, which could result in advance redemption. Please understand this in advance.
The fund’s investment period is 25 months. In case that Company U makes prepayments, however the fund may be terminated in a shorter period than 25 months due to advance redemption. The Company U is assumed to make prepayments, for example, when a local private financial institution appreciates the credibility of the company and provides a loan to the company at a lower interest rate than the fund does.
According to the loan contract, it is prohibited for Company U to make prepayments within 12 months from the date of loan disbursement. Furthermore, in case that Company U makes prepayments on or after the 13th months from the date of loan disbursement, the company is obligated to pay two (2) percent of the loan outstanding as a prepayment (penalty) fee. The fee will be distributed to the investors.
(In addition to the main business, to provide a loan to Company U as described above, the Estonian group company is also engaged in acquiring and collecting a small amount of short-term loans receivable from individuals in Georgia.)
We deeply appreciate your collaboration with or interests in CROWD CREDIT.
The fund gives assistance to a venture firm operating advertising agency service, which is a new field to us. Some of you may have seen the services of Company U when visiting ASEAN, Oceania or related web sites.
We would appreciate your consideration of investment in the fund. It provides loan to the venture firm which is expected to achieve global growth from ASEAN region as a starting-point.
Please see a video message for Japanese investors from Company U, our collaborator in the fund.
DISCLAIMER: This website is intended to provide information regarding the certain aspects of the business of CROWD CREDIT. It is not intended to be a complete description and is not intended as an offer or solicitation with respect to the purchase or sale of any fund.
Bankers Crowdcredit Funding CO., Ltd.
802 Kayabacho 1chome Heiwa Bldg.
1-8-1 Nihonbashi Kayabacho,Chuo-ku, Tokyo Japan
Bankers Crowdcredit Funding CO., Ltd. is a financial institution specializing in lending to small and medium enterprises.