The online real estate investment platform Foxstone has completed a CHF 10 million Series A financing round, the company’s largest to date.
The participation of almost all the existing shareholders is to be noted, as well as the arrival of new entrants in the capital, including Rosablanche Ventures, the family investment vehicle of Thierry Baudon, who founded Mid Europa Partners, one of the largest private equity funds in Central and Eastern Europe.
Foxstone is a real estate crowdfunding platform, which gathers investors and allows them to acquire investment properties together. The company also issues participatory loans to finance real estate development projects. It offers a turnkey service from properties and projects selection to their monitoring and management. All processes are fully digitized and can be completed in just a few clicks. The platform, which gathers more than 15’000 investors, has achieved a transaction volume of over CHF 150 million since its launch in 2018.
Prime investors
Thierry Baudon and his wife Isabelle Schirmer have an extensive experience in private equity and venture capital and are the co-founders of Rosablanche Ventures, a company dedicated to financing Swiss start-ups that led this financing round. The Vaudoise Assurances Group, a long-standing shareholder of Foxstone and a prominent institutional investor in Switzerland, is increasing its equity stake for the third consecutive time. Naef Holding, a renowned Geneva-based real estate investment and services group, is also acquiring a stake. Naef already manages a portfolio of residential properties worth more than CHF 50 million on behalf of Foxstone.
Strengthened governance
Convinced of the importance of a strong governance with diversified profiles and relevant experience (real estate, banking, investments) in Switzerland and internationally, Foxstone now has a five-member Board of Directors. Thierry Baudon, Stefan Schürmann (Group Vaudoise Assurances) and Ivan Schouker join the board, the latter taking on the role of independent chairman. Foxstone’s financial management is also strengthened with the addition to the position of CFO of Isabelle Schirmer, who has 30 years of international experience in corporate strategy and development, M&A and venture capital.
“Foxstone democratizes and provides access to real estate investment to everyone. It is a leader in its industry and has a successful track record. We are very pleased to be working with Foxstone, a company that has earned the trust of its investors by delivering very concrete results. We will support and advise the management team, who has great ambitions in a sector where we see strong growth potential,”
explains Thierry Baudon.
“The Group Vaudoise Assurances has been a partner of Foxstone and its team since the beginning. We are very pleased with this financing round, which places the company in a whole different category. The implementation of an institutional governance will play an important role in its development,”
says Stefan Schürmann, Head of Corporate Development and M&A at Group Vaudoise Assurances.
Future developments
Foxstone plans to consolidate its activities in the Swiss market and to implement the tokenization of real estate assets, which will allow for the full democratization and liquidity of this asset class. Eventually, Foxstone’s ambition is to create a fully digitalized marketplace dedicated to real estate, where anyone will be able to trade securitized real estate shares, as well as loan securities to real estate developers starting at CHF 1’000 in a few clicks from their smartphone. At the same time, the company will remain true to its core business by continuing to deploy technology solutions that will allow it to further automate processes and analyze an ever-increasing amount of data to identify the best investment opportunities.
“We are very proud of the work done by our teams and pleased to welcome new investors who share Foxstone’s strategic vision and whose combined experience is a real asset. We look forward to developing new markets and increasingly innovative and accessible products,”
says Dan Amar, CEO of Foxstone.
Featured image credit: (L-R) David el Eini, Dan Amar, Thierry Baudon, Isabelle Schirmer, and Yossi Amar
