Citi Ventures, the venture capital unit of Citibank, provided an undisclosed sum to the cloud-based SME lending platform, which provides factoring, inventory financing, invoice financing and other types of loans.
The investment comes just months after BlueVine announced $40 million in Series C funding headed by Rakuten FinTech Fund, Lightspeed Venture Partners, 83NORTH, Correlation Ventures and others, said reports in January.
Citi Ventures Managing Director and Co-Head of Venture Capital Arvind Purushotham released a statement explaining the motivation behind the investment.
“BlueVine’s platform addresses pain points, like cash flow management, for the growing market of small businesses in need of financing,” Purushotham said. “We’re excited to champion and accelerate the growth of a company that is setting the industry standard in providing expanded access to capital on an easy-to-use digital platform.”
BlueVine CEO and Founder Eyal Lifshitz pointed to Citi’s existing portfolio as a testament to the strength of the new funding.
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“With a portfolio that includes Square, Betterment, DocuSign and Optimizely, Citi Ventures invests in segment leaders that are reinventing industries,” the executive stated. “We are honored to have them as a strategic investor and believe this further validates BlueVine as the leading small business solution for working capital financing.”
The announcement also revealed that BlueVine has hired former Google Capital Manager Ana Sirbu as its vice president of finance and strategy. That appointment followed BlueVine’s launch of Flex Credit, the company’s entrance into financing beyond factoring and into revolving lines of credit to small business borrowers.
According to reports, BlueVine is expected to facilitate more than $200 million in loans to SMEs in 2016.
