BrazilFine wine membership community Crurated raises €6.8 million
Crurated, a UK-based membership-based wine platform, has raised €6.8 million ($7.2 million) from private investors. The platform, which offers different levels of membership, has been flourishing in the two years since it was launched.
The wine platform was founded in 2021 by Italian former-football player Alfonso De Gaetano, who previously spent over a decade at Google.
Crurated operates by direct collaborations with top wine producers in France and Italy and an innovative approach to the platform’s wine purchasing process. The company certifies wine provenance through blockchain technology, with an NFT created for each bottle. Auctions allow members to bid on bottle lots and fractions of barrels.
The wine club reports that membership and revenue are growing steadily, with 70% of its community being under 45. The founder also said that barrel auctions have been particularly successful with customers, who are keen to access exclusive small-production wines.
With millions in funding now under its belt, Crurated aims to continue developing the technology that underpins its services and to establish new partnerships with more wine producers. According to De Gaetano, half of the money raised came from existing investors, with the remaining amount coming from new investors.
Information from Statista suggests that Europe’s wine market is currently worth upwards of $152 billion, with Italy, France and Spain topping the world’s leading countries in wine production. The market is forecasted to grow further in the coming years, set to hit $218 billion by 2025.
‘Thank you Strategy&’
Notably, De Gaetano has a background in strategy consulting, having previously worked around four years at Booz & Company in the Middle East. Booz & Company later on rebranded as Strategy& after being acquired by professional services giant PwC in 2013.
Following an attentive message from Strategy&’s Middle East alumni relations team on LinkedIn, congratulating him on his next entrepreneurship milestone, De Gaetano responded with gratitude: “A big thank you to Strategy& for the support and for being an incredible school for anyone willing to go on the very challenging path of entrepreneurship.”
According to research by Ondeck, Strategy& is one of the world’s top companies in grooming future entrepreneurs. Based on an analysis of over 220,000 startup founders, the researchers found that nearly 8% of all Strategy& / Booz & Company staff have moved on to found their own company. In comparison, De Gaetano’s latest employer, Google, has a startup founding rate of around 5%.
