PAKRI Science and Industrial park – the Smart City for greentech companies in Paldiski, Estonia is seeking the capital in total of 490 000 euros through EstateGuru crowdfunding platform. The aim of the investment is to use active crowdfunding to build and renovate innovative testing ground for new greentech technologies. After active 3 days of the campaign the project has already raised 40% of the total amount, showing the relevance and attractiveness of Smart City technologies in Estonia.
PAKRI Smart-City CEO Enn Laansoo, Jr. says: “during the last 8 years we have been very open-minded for new innovative and crazy ideas, what make us and the whole concept of our park better and uniquely attractive. Just the idea to offer an opportunity to raise funds from local citizens and public market is very fascinating. It is a win-win project and I have also recommended my grandpa to invest securely in the development of Smart City concept a small sum of 50 euros and enjoy the low risk compared to regular pension funds. “
“To partner up with PAKRI was a great challenge for EstateGuru. The crowd has an opportunity to take part in the world’s first smart-city expansion funding, PAKRI can trial crowdfunding for it’s projects and EstateGuru gets traction and new investors to be able to fund even bigger projects in the future” says Marek Pärtel, CEO of EstateGuru.
PAKRI Smart-City is using EstateGuru crowdfunding for a bridge loan to finance expanding of its activity by purchasing ca 5000m2 industrial building complexes in the City of Paldiski. This industrial and testing facility offers home for PAKRI Science and Industrial Park’s start-ups and existing companies, and is the corner platform for growing companies for another 400 000m2 of smart-city buildings. It has local heating system using renewables and PAKRI has invested into the first solar panels, which are already a part of larger PAKRI’s smart-grid. The next step is right away – the installation of smart-meters for analyzing electricity consumption by the clients and additional renewable equipment to supply more green energy for the clients, improving thus the working environment to support productivity increase of clients’ workers.
PAKRI Smart-City (PAKRI), located in the City of Paldiski, Estonia is an innovative concept under development since 2007. Innovative concept between ca 60ha smart-city, ca 25MW own smart-grid and a science park for greentech (energy and environmental technology) sector. PAKRI Smart-City is developed by PAKRI Science and Industrial Park, whose vision is to become a leading greentech competence and green technology testing center in Northern-Europe by 2020. PAKRI Smart-City development gets support from Tallinn Science Park Tehnopol (home for Skype), which also has the Tehnopol 2.0 Smart-City project under development in the existing ca 20ha urban area campus in Tallinn.
Estateguru is a crowdfunding platform in Estonia, having all property loans secured with real assets, which makes them the first marketplace for secured loans in the Nordic region. Nearly 1,000 investors are mostly from Estonia, Germany and the UK, but EstateGuru has registered investors from all over Europe and today is already seeking new markets in Europe to enter. An average interest rate for investors is 11.48% to date, average LTV is about 48%.
PAKRI is currently making preparations for its smart-grid co-operatives with Estonian Development Fund (EDF). EDF’s investment company SmartGab latest successful investments exit was for example GrabCad, sold for $100M last year to an US-Israel company. PAKRI is already planning to use crowdfunding in the coming year to invest in the next 3,3MW wind turbine, smart-grid network and next building constructions. Total investment potential for PAKRI Smart-City is ca 300M eur and for PAKRI Smart-Grid – ca 50M eur.