Australian Gavl raises $1.8m series A funding

Gavl, an Australian live auctions company, raised $1.8m in Series A funding.

Harris Capital, the investment office of Flight Centre founder Geoff Harris, made the investment.

The company intends to use the funds to continue to develop its technology and to expand sales teams.

Launched in December 2016 by Joel Smith, Leith Donaldson and Michael Artup, Gavl has developed real estate auction live streaming and bidding technology and an app, which has already enabled 200 Australian real estate agencies to broadcast 3,500 auctions to reach 2.5 million views. The platform currently captures all bids made at its auctions, which – in addition to providing bidding analytics – allows the company to share auction results in real time.

The company, which now has a permanent staff of 25, was bootstrapped with a $300k from Smith and his father-in-law, and later received a $2.5m investment in June 2016 by Harris Capital to live stream its first auction and release its iOS and Android apps. The app has been downloaded in 44 countries.

FinSMEs

05/10/2017