Ethical smartphone company Fairphone raises €20 million in debt, crowdfunding, and VC financing

Ethical smartphone company Fairphone raises €20 million in debt, crowdfunding, and VC financing

Dutch ethical smartphone manufacturer Fairphone has raised a total of €20 million in funding and debt over the past few months. Back in August, the company closed a €2.5 million equity crowdfunding campaign, which was followed by a €4.5 million funding round from social impact investors DOEN Participaties, PYMWYMIC, PDENH, and Quadia. In addition to that, Fairphone attracted €13 million in debt financing from creditors including the consortium of ABN AMRO and the Dutch Good Growth Fund.

Fairphone has also recently appointed a new CEO, Eva Gouwens, who joined the company in 2017 as the managing director. The former CEO and founder Bas van Abel will stay involved with the company as a member of the supervisory board.

Founded in 2013 in Amsterdam, Fairphone is a social enterprise that's paving the road for “ethical electronics.” The company is working on putting the ethics first across the supply chain, from mining to manufacturing to the device's life cycle.

The company's current hardware product is the Fairphone 2, an “ethical phone” that runs Android and is known for high repairability. The device, which currently retails for €399, can be easily disassembled by the customer at home, while the company sells most of the modules, including the battery, camera, display, speakers, etc. on its website.

Fairphone will use the funding as “a stable foundation to sustainably scale up its operations, research new products and business models and expand sales efforts in untapped European markets,” the company stated in a press release.

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