Esusu, a fintech startup for rent reporting and data solutions for credit building, broke the billion-dollar valuation mark and became a unicorn after closing a $130 million Series B round of funding.
The funding round was led by SoftBank Vision Fund 2 with participation from Jones Feliciano Family Office, Lauder Zinterhofer Family Office, Motley Fool Ventures, Schusterman Foundation, SoftBank Group’s SB Opportunity Fund, Related Companies, and Wilshire Lane Capital.
This fundraise makes Esusu one of the few Black-owned startups to reach unicorn status both in the United States and globally.
“There are millions of Americans who are considered credit invisible, which means they have no credit score or financial identity. Esusu can be a life-changing opportunity for them. It can be the difference between being a subprime borrower and a prime borrower, which can result in hundreds of thousands of dollars saved in interest over their lifetime,” said cofounder Samir Goel, a first-generation Indian American.
Esusu’s Series A round led by Motley Fool Ventures Managing Partner Ollen Douglass positioned the company to accelerate market adoption and become the leading platform in the sector, growing the company close to 600 percent year-over-year in 2021.
With plans to triple its employees, Esusu will use the Series B capital infusion to scale the team, turbocharge growth through product innovation, and build the most comprehensive financial health platform in the market.
Keeps migrants away from predatory lending
Founded in 2018, Esusu operates on the premise that where you come from, the color of your skin and your financial identity should never determine where you end up in life.
Growing up in immigrant families in the US without a financial or credit footprint, cofounders Abbey Wemimo and Samir Goel experienced financial exclusions firsthand.
They built the company with a mandate to empower the 45 million Americans who don’t have credit scores and the millions more who are marginalized due to background, race, and zip code.
Esusu’s rent reporting platform captures rental payment data and reports it to credit bureaus to boost credit scores.
This allows renters to build and establish their credit scores while helping property owners mitigate against initiating evictions, powered by differentiated data and insights. The startup reaches over 2.5 million rental units across all 50 states in the United States.
“We founded Esusu with the vision of using data to bridge the racial wealth gap and create more equitable financial opportunities for low-to-moderate-income households in this country,” said Abbey Wemimo.
