This past September, Australia finally allowed “proprietary firms” to use “Crowd-Sourced Funding” (CSF) or investment crowdfunding to raise capital online. New legislation was signed into law that should help boost online capital formation in Australia.
Before the change, only “unlisted public companies” were allowed to crowdfunding thus the option was only available to less than 2% of companies registered in Australia. If you wanted to crowdfund you had to first change your structure to become an unlisted public firm. In Australia, just like many other countries, small, proprietary firms, make up a large portion of businesses in need of capital.
Today, CI has received a note from Birchal, an equity crowdfunding platform, indicating their first “Pty Ltd.” company to offer securities, Bausele – a watch company, is currently at 91% of their target and well on their way to be the first Pty Ltd company in the country to have successfully crowdfunded their company.
Birchal is queuing up for Pty Ltd companies. Currently, along with Bausele, there are several other Pty Ltd companies raising capital.
Birchal has produced a solid explanation of the Aussie rules which may be viewed here.
Over time, it will be interesting to see if the most recent crowdfunding rule fix in Australia will help to encourage investors to should the risk and invest their money into promising small firms in need of growth capital.
Have a crowdfunding offering you'd like to share? Submit an offering for consideration using our Submit a Tip form and we may share it on our site!