The platform, the leader in renting boats via the Internet, achieves an injection of capital led by IntelectiumBarcelona, January 2016.- Boat Bureau, the leading boat rental platform, has recently closed its first investment round of 700,000 euros. Led by Intelectium, the round will finance the investments in marketing and technology necessary to accelerate business growth. The company, based in Barcelona and financed since its inception by its founding partners, has decided to open its capital to a group of business angels belonging to the IESE network and the investment fund Making Ideas Business. Private investment has been complemented by public funds at the state level (Enisa, ICO) and regional funds (IFEM). Intelectium has acted as the sole coordinator for raising capital in this operation. After this injection of capital and having doubled sales during the first half of 2015, BoatBureau is in a phase of accelerated growth. The company's next objectives focus on technological improvements to the web platform to offer a 100% automated rental service, better usability, investment in digital marketing and the adaptation of the organizational structure to accommodate the expected sales growth in the coming months. These objectives are in line with the company's expansion in the global market, offering a greater number of vessels, increasing the range of lengths and destinations and investing in facilitating the booking process thanks to the real-time online availability of its entire fleet. Since the beginning of its activity in 2013, BoatBureau has accumulated more than 1,000 rentals and a turnover of close to 3 million euros. In 2014, the company's sales grew by more than 200% compared to 2013. Expected sales for 2015 will be higher, doubling those obtained in the last financial year.
For Josep Mercadé, Co-Founder and CEO of BoatBureau, this investment operation “has been very satisfactory because it has allowed new partners to join the company who will not only bring their economic resources but also their valuable experience in other businesses. Without Intelectium's leadership, this process of seeking funding and new powerful partners would have been extremely more complicated and lengthy.” In addition, Mercadé especially values the investment objective (launching an ambitious plan for digital marketing, usability and transactionality of the platform) since, according to the CEO of BoatBureau, “it will soon allow us to be the platform with the most online availability of ships. Right now, we have 4,500 boats and we will start 2016 with about 9,000 boats in real online availability, out of a total fleet of 16,000 boats for rent in our database.” Lluís Vidal, partner of Intelectium, considers the BoatBureau project “especially interesting” for two reasons: on the one hand, “they have conceived a global business since its inception, managing to operate in more than 100 different countries” and, on the other hand, “they have strongly opted for technology as a lever to differentiate themselves and scale the business to the next level”, he concludes.About BoatBureauBoatBureau is a company founded in 2011 in Barcelona as an online boat rental platform with the purpose of facilitating people's desire to have any type of nautical boat anywhere in the world. Since then, BoatBureau has established itself as the leader in the Spanish market in the range of boats from 10 to 20 meters in length and the company expects to have a turnover of around 3 million euros in 2015. Through the online boat rental platform, individuals can access a fleet of more than 16,000 boats offered by more than 400 professional boat owners from 100 countries around the world.About IntelectiumIntelectium is a boutique accelerator for technological startups with high expertise in raising private and public capital. Founded in 2004 in Barcelona, in the last 7 years Intelectium has raised more than 70 million euros in funding for more than 250 startups, including significant projects such as Hot.es, Geenapp, Minube and Bilua, among others, in which it has also invested. Accelerating the growth and expansion of technology-based companies is Intelectium's raison d'être.
