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The company, which has developed a mortgage loan platform, set a local record with the latest financing, according to , “closing the largest capital raise ever led by local venture funds.”

led the round, which also included participation from , 1Salesforce Ventures is an investor in Crunchbase. They have no say in our editorial process. For more, head here./footnote] , and . The latest infusion brings its to $113 million, according to its Crunchbase profile, and is more than triple the amount of the $25 million it raised last November. Athena Home Loans is now valued at $230 million, according to the Financial Review.

The company plans to use the new capital primarily to expand into home loans, the publication reported, after an initial focus on the refinancing market. It also aims to “start offering loans for property purchases, which is a substantially bigger market,” noted the Review.

Athena Home Loans was founded in 2017 by former bankers and with the goal of “freeing people from the mortgage handcuffs” (per ) but did not formally launch its digital lending platform until February of 2019. Within its first three days of launching, the company surpassed $250 million in home loan applications, according to a �� issued earlier this year by partner Austin-based Q2 Holdings. As of April 2019, Athena had “written more than $500 million worth of loans,” according to the .

I reached out to the company for more specifics and a spokesperson told me that Athena has had over $4 billion in submitted apps since its launch. Also, in October alone, Athena saw more��than $1.2 billion in applications since announcing that it had passed on the RBA rate cut in full.

Q2 Holdings powers Athena’s cloud-based platform, which gives users the ability to apply for a loan in “as little as 15 minutes and receive a decision in a matter of minutes.” Athena claims to save borrowers an average of $60,000 over the life of their loan.

There’s no shortage of digital lending platforms here in the United States. We’ve written about a few of them (for example, in June, mortgage tech startup , raised $130 million). But Athena’s goal is to disrupt Australia’s , which it says is dominated by banks.

For more on the Australian startup scene, check out Natasha’s piece from earlier this year.

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This fund tops off Australia-specific efforts Salesforce has been making since 2012, when it first started investing in the space. The company has invested in Australia’s , and , and Bugcrowd, to name a few.

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Bugcrowd founder said in that “the establishment of Salesforce Ventures in Australia speaks volumes of the calibre of Australian entrepreneurs, as well as their forward-looking attitude.”

We haven’t written too much about Australian startups, but we’d love to change that (shoot me a note at natasha@crunchbase.com)

Let me give you some background on the startup scene Down Under. About half of Australian startups are actively trying to raise funds, according to . ��So far in 2019, top deals include a mortgage lending startup raising $40 million in a venture round led by ANZ, and , a 3D machine vision systems manufacturer that raised a $32 million Series A.

Salesforce’s bet on Australia’s early-stage tech market makes sense as other groups are already investing into the region. Like government initiative , which says on its website that it will offer $57 million in funding to “help start-ups and small to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in regional NSW succeed and create more local jobs in regional communities across the State.”

Part of its efforts are visible in its relatively new startup incubator, the Sydney Startup Hub. Last month it celebrated its first anniversary and shared that its 480 startups raised over $182 million in the past year. ��NSW plans to invest $35 million in the hub over the next 5 years, a.

In short, Salesforce Ventures’ new fund has an audience.

Also notable: the fund is comparatively less than the other international launches Salesforce Ventures has made in the past two years: in December it launched a $100 million fund for Japan and in May it launched a $100 million fund for Canada.

Here’s the vintage, and size of the known Salesforce Ventures Funds:

Update, 3/08/2019: Salesforce reached out to Crunchbase News with a comment explaining the discrepancy in fund sizes between Australia, and previous international venture funds. Here is a statement from Matt Garratt, managing partner at��Salesforce��Ventures:

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