Sugar raises $1.9 million in pre-seed funding

Games scaling company Sugar has secured £1.5 million ($1.9 million) in pre-seed funding.

The investment was led by Passion Capital. Further funding came from Velo Partners and Lendable's Victoria van Lennep.

"We're thrilled to be partnering with Sugar and working with the team. Flexible, quick and efficient financing for games studios and apps developers makes a lot of sense," said Passion Capital partner Malin Posern.

"There's an opportunity here to make these ecosystems thrive, and Sugar will provide the platform to help drive that innovation along with the ambition to become a world-leading financing provider."

Velo Partners partner Evan Hoff added: "We see Sugar fulfilling a crucial role in the European games funding ecosystem, and believe Matt and the team are building leading-edge algorithms and processes which will support games developers to scale their businesses in the ultimate win-win proposition."

Sugar rush

The London-based firm was founded last year, and aids studios in scaling up their games through providing data-driven finance.

Currently, Sugar has three products on offer. The first of which is SugarBoost, it serves as a marketing loan to scale up games. Next, there is SugarFlow which allows clients to have early access to digital revenue.

Finally, SugarCap gives the studios an advance on video games tax relief. Usually, the process can take months to go through.

With the new investment, the company hopes to make some key hires. It would also like to scale its platform further.

"We're so excited to be working with Passion and delighted to have expert fintech investors on board," said Sugar CEO Matt Frenchman.

"Like us, Passion sees access to finance as a big problem in the games and apps world. With this round of funding, we can focus on developing our platform, growing the team and ultimately giving studios quick and easy finance to scale up."