ARCHITECT SUCCESSES

SEE ALL
Champ Titles Raised $18M from Point72 Ventures
Champ Titles Raised $18M from Point72 Ventures

Architect Partners was the exclusive Financial Advisor to Champ Titles.

Transaction Overview

On March 27, 2024, Cleveland-based digital title and registration platform Champ Titles announced an $18 million Series C equity round led by Point72 Ventures with participation by existing investors.

Company Description

Champ Titles provides a digital title and registration suite to streamline the vehicle titling process. Their platform enables the creation of legal, digital titles for easy transfer and verification, serving insurance carriers, lenders, state governments, auto dealers, and owners. Stakeholders, including state motor vehicle departments, lenders, and vehicle owners, benefit from a unified and transparent system, where all information is readily accessible and transaction times are markedly reduced. The governance of the digital platform is established through clear guidelines, ensuring all parties adhere to the updated processes and regulations.

Champ Titles’ success is measured by the elimination of more than 5 million pieces of paper annually on average per state; a reduction in processing time from 40-60 days to a matter of hours; increased productivity of DMV title clerks processing more than five times as many titles per day; and the improved experience for consumers in each state that has adopted Champ Titles’ solutions. Over the last twelve months, the company has successfully onboarded new states including New Jersey, Kentucky, and Illinois, and expanded its relationship with West Virginia by creating the first National Digital Titling Clearinghouse (NDTC). Through these efforts, the company has grown rapidly with revenue increasing by more than 300% year over year. 

Founded in 2018 by CEO, Shane Bigelow, the company now has 63 employees and is headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. 

Funding

In this Series C funding round, Champ Titles raised $18M from Point72 Ventures and existing investors including W.R. Berkley Corporation, Eos Venture Partners, Guidewire Software, and Rev1 Ventures, bringing the total amount raised since inception to $45M. 

In the prior Series B round, Champ Titles raised $13M from Guidewire Software, Eos Venture Partners, and Ally Ventures.

Before that, Champ Titles raised $13.5M in 2021 in a Series A. Emergents, now Architect Partners, served as the exclusive Financial Advisor for that financing. 

Competition

Champ Titles’ biggest competitors are existing state DMVs deciding to be a software company and developing solutions on their own or via large systems developers.  However, they also compete with other digital title networks such as Cario and Oxhead Alpha/Tezos. In addition, technology-enabled DMV solutions such as Fast Enterprises are seen as competitive but don’t offer the same efficacy.

 

Architect Partners’ Perspective

Champ Titles’ SaaS-based solutions present a compelling example of blockchain-enabled infrastructure solving real-world problems.  By focusing on the needs and pain points of legacy auto title, registration, and lien processing, Champ has leveraged the power of blockchain to transform critical government services.  The result is exponentially accelerated processing time for DMV constituents, with improved accuracy and reduced cost.  Yet Champ’s solutions capture many key benefits of on-chain data processing – which include trust, transparency, data integrity, security, and efficiency – without users even being aware of their blockchain foundations.  

While much attention is focused on recent resilience in crypto asset prices, we believe 2024 will see significant growth in non-speculative enterprise applications for distributed ledger technology.  Champ’s successful raise demonstrates investor interest in practical and scalable solutions to real-world problems.

Financing

Week of November 18 – November 24

Todd White
November 27, 2024
DOWNLOAD FULL REPORT

November 18 – November 24 (Published November 27th)

 

PERSPECTIVES by Todd White

 

18 Crypto Private Financings Raised: $156M

Rolling 3-Month-Average: $221M

Rolling 52-Week Average: $221M

 

 

Supply chain management—broadly defined as a system to govern the flow of goods and services from their points of origin to distribution and consumption—is as old as trade itself and fraught with unavoidable complexity. The need to oversee the network of independent parties who touch, move, or enhance products along their commercial journey raises questions of security, visibility, tracking, and timing of these complex flows. Recent trends have added variables related to sustainable and ethical sourcing to the mix. These challenges present an intuitive fit for blockchain-enabled solutions, a match that has attracted both academic and commercial attention for at least a decade. These solutions promise vast potential improvements in transparency, traceability, and reductions in administrative costs—the hallmarks of effective enterprise blockchain systems.

 

 

Trade finance—the provision of credit to support the global exchange of goods—is also a centuries-old industry that relies on antiquated systems for contract creation, receivables financing (known as “factoring”), shipment and payment timing, mitigating disputed “facts,” AML and sanctions compliance, and the inevitable delays and disputes that erupt among counterparts who often distrust one another. Migrating to on-chain solutions has the potential to mitigate or entirely eliminate many of these frictions, resulting in faster, more cost-efficient, and easily auditable solutions.

 

 

VoloFin, a Singapore-based blockchain-powered trade and supply chain finance platform with operations in India and the US, announced a $50 million financing facility on November 11 from an unnamed US bank using a structured notes program issued through an SPV. According to Co-founder and CEO Rashan Shaw, VoloFin will use the new $50 million line to provide fintech-based lending in cross-border trade finance, focusing on Indian exporters to global buyers by financing receivables. The company anticipates expanding the capacity to $150 million over the next couple of years and expanding its “multi-lender” capacity to better serve client needs.

 

 

We’ve been intrigued by this potential for years. From systems to solve climate-related financial disclosure to tracing foodstuffs to financing the delivery of energy and oilfield services, this seems a compelling arena for distributed ledger technology to increase transparency, reduce risk, and ultimately facilitate the free flow of capital.


Contact ryan@architectpartners.com to schedule a meeting.