Portugal’s Bizay — a customized products marketplace for SMBs — just raised a $38.6M C round – TechCrunch

Bizay, a marketplace for small-to-medium-sized businesses allowing them to create highly customized products (such as merchandise), has raised a $38.6 million (€32 million) funding round. The Series C financing round was co-led by investors Indico Capital and the European Investment Bank, with “strong support” from Iberis Capital and existing investors including LeadX Capital Partners, Omnes Capital and Pathena.

This means Bizay has now raised a total of more than €54 million. The company previously raised a Series B financing round of €22 million. This new round will accelerate the development of further product expansion targeted at SMBs and reinforce Bizay´s operation supplying more than one million SMBs in 21 countries across Europe and America.

Bizay’s idea is to become the “Amazon” for SMBs in terms of merchandising, packaging, consumables, business essentials, decorations and uniforms, with good quality, at a fraction of the normal costs associated with these items.

Bizay’s Chief of Growth Officer José Salgado, said: “The current health crisis accelerated the shift to online ordering of customizable products at reduced prices. Our platform will be a key facilitator for businesses to recover at a faster pace. We are totally confident in achieving the goals that will allow us to enter a new level of global ambition”.

Speaking to TechCrunch Salgado added: “We are a software company, and our technology enables us to connect to industrial manufacturers that would usually work only for large corporations. We have no stock, we have no machines, no production. Using AI we aggregate multiple orders, and supply those orders using the network of industrial producers that we have in our marketplace. So we are able to offer these SMBs competitive prices for small individual orders. These industrial manufacturers would never normally supply SMBs because they are just too small.”

Stephan Morais, managing general partner at Indico Capital Partners, said: “Bizay is entering a new growth phase and this round will consolidate their presence across Europe and enable them to capture the opportunity that stems from the shift towards online ordering of personalized products for SMBs.”