Coming from a solid venture background, Marine Desbans was a senior associate at Serena Capital for four years from 2008 and was a co-founder of the French chapter of the European Venture Capital Network before joining Norway-listed media firm Schibsted’s corporate venture capital unit in 2013.
Since arriving at Schibsted Growth, the ESSEC Business School graduate has made an impact by working on deals including Schibsted’s €2m ($2.15m) round into groceries comparison website Monsieur Drive, 2014’s €1.2m investment into ‘Tinder for jobs’ app Kudoz, and peer-to-peer lending platform Prêt d’Union’s €21m series D.
Schibsted also helped lead a remarkable transaction with corporate peers Naspers, Telenor and Singapore Press Holdings (SPH) to set up joint ventures for the development of their online classified platforms in four countries: Brazil, Indonesia, Thailand and Bangladesh.