Kepler, the construction company that builds energy-neutral homes in its own workshop, has broken records with the crowdlending platform Winwinner. Managers Dennis Vangeneugden and Frank Custers saw 800,000 euros of extra capital from investors appear in the account in one hour. The loan should give wings to Kepler’s steep rise.
With crowdlending, private individuals and companies can invest directly in SMEs. The young construction company Kepler, which builds standard homes in the workshop in Genk and delivers them to the site 5 weeks later, turned to the Winwinner platform for such crowdlending. It became an unprecedented success. In barely an hour, the intended capital of 800,000 euros was ‘in the pocket’. It allows Kepler to achieve scale in building sustainable homes even faster than now. The company has only been in existence for 17 months and has since sold 46 homes and already installed 34. (see video below) This corresponds to a turnover of 14.6 million in the first (extended) financial year and immediate profit figures at the bottom line.
“We were pleasantly surprised by the enormous interest from investors in our issue,” says Dennis Vangeneugden. “This collaboration underlines the need for innovative financing solutions that benefit both investors and entrepreneurs.”
What is special about this crowdlending is the term of 1 year. “We normally opt for 4 or 5 years,” explains Matthias Browaeys from Winwinner. “Now we had the opportunity to do this in 1 year. We work to ensure that this formula also encourages ‘smaller’ investors to activate their savings in a meaningful way for the benefit of a local SME.”
