• Estonian wine investment platform WineFortune looks to raise EUR 150K on SeedBlink
• The platform makes wine investment significantly more accessible and offers a powerful additional level of fraud protection
• The investment will be used for AI/ML-focused product development and international scaling

WineFortune, the Estonia-based platform for wine investment, came to the famous Romanian crowd investment platform SeedBlink to extend its Angel round of investment that took place last November. The goal is to raise additional EUR 150K.

From Regular Import to a Tech-Powered Investment Platform

The founders of WineFortune.com come from diverse backgrounds in finance, technology, and the wine industry. The team includes the Best Sommelier of the World 2023, Raimonds Tomsons, and the seasoned wine expert Rein Kasela with 38 years of experience in the industry. Risto Kaljurand (CEO) and his team got inspired to create the platform after recognizing the limited access to this asset class of fine wines for the classical small investors who lack expertise and don’t want to start with prices as high as thousands of euros.

WineFortune platform was founded in 2021. Prior to that, the company was a classical importer and wholesaler of wines. After a few years, the team observed more and more people interested in diversifying their investment portfolio with fine wines, and so they started planning to create a wine investments platform.

‘I believe that the WineFortune concept could make this asset class accessible for wider circles of people,’ the startup’s angel investor Sergei Anikin comments.

Several key milestones that WineFortune achieved up until now include developing an automated trading platform, establishing partnerships with major wine producers and distributors, and building a comprehensive database of investable wines. According to Mr Kaljurand, the most significant challenges so far included navigating regulatory requirements, ensuring the security and authenticity of transactions, and educating the market about wine as an investment. Finally, WineFortune is the first licenced investment fund in the world that invests in the wines and is accessible for all the investors due the missing minimum transaction requirement.

‘The emergence of services like WineFortune has been delayed primarily due to the complexities of the wine market, including the need for extensive knowledge of wine valuation, storage, and fraud prevention. Additionally, the technology needed to democratize access to wine investment, such as AI for fraud detection and blockchain for transaction transparency, has only become viable in recent years,’ Mr Kaljurand tells ITKeyMedia.

Two Product for the Ease of Wine Investment

Currently, WineFortune offers two products:

• An ML-powered passive-fee investment fund to offer the easiest way for investors to invest in wines.
• A subscription for wine list shares which are exchangeable against real bottles. This way, there’s no need to choose exact bottles for entering wine investment, private and business clients can secure with lowest cost today high-demand wine for the future when the bottles are ready. WineFortune’s Belgian and British partner warehouses take care of insuring and delivering these future wines.

‘Our biggest value proposition and advantage on the market is that WineFortune allows investors to buy shares of a fund, starting with tickets as cheap as 1 Euro. This makes wine investment accessible to a broader range of investors. Secondly, there’s our monthly subscription option to buy wine list shares, in this case the client owns a choice for a wide selection of future wines,’ Mr Kaljurand explains.

Importantly, WineFortune also addresses wine fraud by creating a comprehensive database that includes detailed information about each bottle of investable wine. This database helps ensure the authenticity and provenance of the wines, significantly reducing the risk of fraud. All wines in the database have full track records thanks to the official state controlled bonded warehouse in Belgium, Wine Logistics International.

Product Development and Other Ambitions

The WineFortune platform is available as a web-based application, accessible from any device with an internet connection. Future plans may include the development of dedicated mobile apps for even more convenient access.

More importantly, the capital that WineFortune is currently raising will be used to develop a robust AI for the platform, that could facilitate it on several accounts, including fraud detection, valuation predictions, and personalized investment recommendations. The AI technology is developed in-house, leveraging the founders’ expertise in both technology and the wine industry.

‘I appreciate those using AI to disrupt classical business models and connect technology with the real world,’ WineFortune’s angel investor Siim Sikkut tells ITKeyMedia.

‘The funds raised will be used to enhance the platform’s technology and increase marketing efforts to attract more users and grow the community. I could say that even the biggest part of raised capital goes to scaling, because we already own MVP and we have proven our platform on the home market, in Estonia. We did a market testing last year and saw that there are interested prospects from Italy, Germany and Austria for our platform,’ Mr Kaljurand specifies.

According to him, WineFortune chose to crowdfund its current round to engage with a wider community of investors and wine enthusiasts as crowdfunding is known to provide an additional marketing channel to new markets. SeedBlink in particular enjoys the reputation for supporting innovative startups and its extensive network of potential investors, as well as overwhelmingly positive feedback from startups that have already fundraised on the platform.

‘Aside from expanding into new markets and adding more sophisticated investment parameters to clients’ dashboard, WineFortune’s plans include forging partnerships with more wine producers and investment platforms to enhance the overall value and reach of the service. The goal for 2030 is to own assets under management over EUR 1.6B and to be listed on London and Shanghai alternative stock exchanges,’ Mr Kaljurand shares.

WineFortune’s angel-backed crowd investment campaign on SeedBlink runs until the 5h of August 2024.