German equity crowdfunding site Companisto has announced a platform record. The readfy funding campaign listed on Companisto raised €100,000 in just 24 hours and half a million Euros within six weeks. Over 1300 investors came together to back the company that offers free access to ten thousand e-books – including international best sellers. The company will support their service by incorporating advertisements in the e-books but will also a premium, ad free version.
The company was created to take advantage of the growing number of tablets and e-readers being purchased in Germany. In 2013 readfy estimated that 8 million tablets were sold – accompanied by 800,000 e-readers. Bitkom estimates that today 21% of the population read digitally across all age groups. Readfy is akin to Spotify or Deezer but for e-books – a business that as of yet does not exist.
Companisto founders along with the readfy founders were amazed with the results. The campaign is definitely the most successful crowdfunding project in the German book industry.
The offer was initially set to raise just €25,000 with a maximum raise of €500,000 which was easily achieved. Price per share was set at €5.00.
Companisto has funded €4.9 million to date for 28 startups. Companisto lists over 15,000 registered investors and is available in 45 different countries. The Berlin based platform was founded by two lawyers – David Rhotert and Tamo Zwinge – and was launched in June 2012.
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