P2P marketplace venture vendi notches up funding first
London-based startup vendi has closed its first funding round, pulling in £600,000.
The venture was founded in 2018 by ex-Cisco employees Anil Rao, CTO, and Pablo Gonzalez-Iglesias, CEO. It has developed an AI-assisted peer-to-peer marketplace for people to buy and sell verified tech products.
The funding round is composed of angel investors from the US, the UK, and Spain, including Jorge Gonzalez-Iglesias and Sustainable Ventures.
“We are thrilled to have the support of great investors and entrepreneurs from different countries as well as the wealth of experience and expertise that Sustainable Ventures bring. They align very well with our values and support our circular economy and marketplace security principles,” says Pablo Gonzalez-Iglesias, CEO and Co-Founder, vendi.
He adds that the company’s mission is two-fold: to make P2P a trusted and mainstream activity enabling people to buy and sell devices at the best prices and to stretch the lifecycle of their electronic goods to reduce electronic-waste.
“Peer-to-peer marketplaces offer new and preowned products 30-60% cheaper than retail, but my experience, as many others’ out there, shows there is an inherent flaw and that the trust needed between buyer and seller cannot be guaranteed,” he comments.
“That’s why we decided to create vendi to eliminate the risk for both sides of the equation, allowing honest buyers and sellers to transact with one another. In the near future, other marketplaces will be able to leverage vendi’s verification-as-a-service to further protect their users against online scams.”