“YES Corporate Finance has assisted us in a fast and professional manner in raising new financing. A great start for the upcoming funding round!”
Marco van den Ouden, Managing Director Datlinq
Starting on May 6th, the government implemented a special arrangement for start-up and scale-up companies. The government made available € 100 million for bridging loans to support these promising companies. These are often SMEs that fall outside of the common government’s scope. At the beginning of May, YES Corporate Finance successfully assisted Datlinq (https://datlinq.com/), headquartered in Rotterdam, in arranging a new Corona-bridge Loan (COL).
Datlinq offers an online data and insights platform to suppliers of food and drink in the food service market. Data Outlet, the data platform, contains over 3 million European hospitality industry outlet profiles. Using online and offline data, Datlinqs’ Artificial Intelligence (AI) compiles enriched profiles that are ideally suited for data-driven sales and database maintenance. The insights platform is marketed under the name Market Monitor. This suite consists of several products: Outlet Monitor, Distribution Monitor and Shopper Monitor. These products provide customers with valuable insights into market development, brand performance and consumer behavior.
With this online data and insights platform, Datlinq can offer all the ingredients for effective and efficient execution of sales and marketing. The data from these two platforms is of great value to different kind of suppliers of food and drink, such as Coca-Cola, Heineken, Red Bull, FrieslandCampina and Texel’s bier, who all purchase a subscription for this (“Software-as-a-Service”). Using Datlinq’s platforms, companies know where most opportunities are to increase their sales, and are able to work in a more focused approach. Datlinq builds a complete profile surrounding a location and links a variety of data from, for example, online reviews, menu information, delivery websites, checkout data and customer/consumer interviews. Think Google, but Datlinq goes beneath the surface and builds an in-depth location profile, and is specialized in the hospitality industry. We’re talking about real Big Data, using Machine Learning and AI. Datlinq is currently doing a lot of extra maintenance on the database, as COVID-19 is changing the hospitality industry. Unfortunately, there are businesses that are closing, however many businesses are adapting to the new situation. For example, the number of restaurants that have diversified, by starting a take-out and delivery service, has grown tremendously.
YES Corporate Finance advised Datlinq in selecting the most suitable financier and guided Datlinq through the steps of the financing process intensively, among which the preparation of the Financing Memorandum. Initially, the process started with discussions at the house bank, however nowadays banks are looking for guarantees that are difficult to offer in these times. This led Datlinq, on the recommendation of YES Corporate Finance, to a special government loan for promising companies.
The demand for this COL loan was enormous. Just in South Holland alone, over 205 applications had been submitted, for a total amount of € 83 million. Not all of these were honored, by far. Of the € 100 million that had been set aside nationwide, only € 21 million was reserved for this province. More information: https://www.innovationquarter.nl/col/
It has been said that Datlinq’s application was reviewed as the best plan, which is a nice compliment. Datlinq is already active in several other countries, besides the Netherlands, but the next step is the further rollout and growth of the company to more European countries. To accomplish this, follow-up financing is already in process. As Datlinq has secured this new loan, they can carefully prepare for the next round.
Click here for more examples of successful transactions.
More information:
Arjan Boonekamp
Managing Partner
+31 6 8127 1573
boonekamp@yescf.nl
YES Corporate Finance
welkom@yescf.nl
Marco van den Ouden
Managing Director Datlinq
+31 6 5355 9615
vandenouden@datlinq.com
www.datlinq.com
