eEquity, Bonnier Ventures and management announces a full exit of Refunder. Top Online Partners Group, which owns brands including TopCashback acquires a large minority ownership initially and will gradually take over 100% of the business within a 3-year period.
Refunder was founded in 2014 by Fredrik Ohlsson and Victor Dahlborg in Stockholm, Sweden with the ambition to establish the cashback model on the Swedish market and become the natural starting point for Swedish consumers’ online shopping. Today Refunder has more than 600,000 members in Sweden and close to 1,000 well known retailers as customers on Refunder.se. Since 2018, Refunder has operations also in Poland.
Magnus Wiberg, Managing Partner at eEquity, comments: “We invested in Refunder in January 2017 when they had SEK 23 million in revenues. Now, the company is 3-times larger, but most importantly very profitable and will return a fund average multiple of 3-5x for us. We have been very active in the investment and have played a key role in changing the strategy from growth only to profitable sustainable growth and helped the company with our e-commerce expertise to develop the offering to merchants. We initially came in contact with the company as I knew Victor from when he was my Marketing Director in Pricerunner. Cashback is a rapidly expanding sector and has really benefitted from strong e-commerce growth the last couple of years.”
Ulrika Saxon, CEO of Bonnier Ventures and Chairperson of the Board of Refunder comments; “We invested early in Refunder, since 2014, and have seen the company grow steady and successfully into its position as a Nordic market leader. We are impressed by the strong management team, and this step is a proof of their hard work and impressive performance. We look forward to welcome TopCashBack as a new investor with great relevance around the cap table.”
Fredrik Ohlsson, CEO and Co-Founder of Refunder, comments: “Becoming part of the TopCashback Group, one of the largest cashback businesses in the world, gives us an enormous strength in the Nordic market. We will now be able to attract even more high-end merchants to our platform, and the offer to our 700,000 members will be far better than anything else on the market. We have many super cool features that will be launched on the platform during the coming year.”
Additional questions
Magnus Wiberg
Managing Partner eEquity
+46 735 375 000
magnus@eequity.se
Ulrika Saxon
Bonnier Ventures
+46 70 6436065
Ulrika.saxon@bonnier.se
Fredrik Ohlsson
CEO Refunder
+46 70 8484446
Fredrik.ohlsson@refunder.se
About eEquity
Founded in 2010, eEquity is a private equity firm investing in Nordic digital growth companies. Portfolio companies include, among others, Pricerunner, Footway, NA-KD, iDeal of Sweden, Aim’n, Preglife, Son of a Tailor and TwistShake. eEquity invests in growth companies benefiting from online and digital conversion, being led by strong entrepreneurs with the potential to become clear market leaders. The investors behind eEquity consist of leading European family offices and international financial institutions. eEquity has four funds and approx. SEK 3 billion invested in Digital Growth companies.
About Bonnier Ventures
Bonnier Ventures is the venture capital arm of Bonnier Group, a holding company fully owned by the Bonnier family. Bonnier Ventures targets significant minority shareholdings in technology businesses in the early stages of scaling up, typically making initial investments around SEK 20-60 million (USD 2-6 million). Bonnier Ventures works closely with their portfolio companies and provides active support as they scale up. The portfolio currently includes 16 companies such as Acast, Natural Cycles and Doktor.se.
About Refunder
Refunder is the leading cashback site in the Nordics with over 600,000 members in Sweden and over 100,000 members in Poland. Refunder is channeling over SEK 1.4 billion YoY to its connected retailers and has become an important performance channel for more than 1,700 retailers in Sweden and Poland like H&M, Zalando, MediaMarkt, Hotels.com, Hemköp, Adlibris, CDON, elon, NordicFeel etc. Cashback has proven to be an efficient channel to drive incremental sales with better margins, since the cashback-shopper in general generates shopping baskets with higher average order value, lower return rates and an increased loyalty to the retailers providing cashback.
About Top Online Partners Group (TopCashback)
Established 16 years ago in the UK, and with more than 15 million members worldwide, TopCashback is the most generous cashback shopping site. It helps its members save as much money as possible on their shopping by offering money back on everything they buy when clicking through the site thousands of brands available. With sites operating in the UK, USA, Germany, China, Russia and India, and a white label business called Top Benefit Scheme, its members save a fortune by doing their shopping, utility switching, and renewing insurance policies through the site.
