This week saw 22 companies across the industry close medium-sized funding rounds, raising a total of $636m.
The top ten deals comprised of deals ranging from $12m to $150m and made up $575m of the total amount raised during the week. The companies closing deals came from a range of sectors including InsurTech, PayTech, Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies, CyberTech, WealthTech and Marketplace Lending.
Many of the deals this week were modest. Almost half of the deals were in the $4-6m region.
Although still a positive week for FinTech, no stand-out deals stole the show. However, looking beyond fundraises, Sumo Logic was acquired in a deal worth $1.7bn.
Francisco Partners, a global investment firm, has acquired SaaS analytics platform Sumo Logic in a deal that values the business at $1.7bn.
Shareholders will receive $12.05 per share in cash. This represents a premium of around 57% to Sumo Logic’s unaffected closing stock price on January 20, the last full trading day prior to media reports about the potential transaction.
Following the close of the deal, Sumo Logic will become a private company.
The small to medium-sized deals could indicate a slight slowdown in funding. Given this, it is perhaps unsurprising that the FinTech sector saw no new unicorns in January 2023, indicating a drop in VC valuations.
FinTech Global research recently reported that overall unicorn announcements have also hit a low in January with only two new unicorn announcements. Public valuations dropped 23% (S&P 500) in 2022 from 2021’s peak in December and private markets have followed suit so far.
Private equity and venture capital firms mark, or assign value to, their portfolios on a quarterly basis. At present, private investment valuations lag the public markets, although that could soon change as the valuations, audited in December, begin to trickle. These valuations signal a continued valuation drop, differing from public markets which saw a 13.5% (S&P 500) rise in Q4 2022.
Here are the deals that took place.
Indian InsurTech InsuranceDekho scores $150m in biggest round of its type
InsuranceDekho, an InsurTech which has positioned itself as a leader in the Indian market, has raised $150m in Series A funding.
The round, which consisted of a mis of equity and debt, was ed by Goldman Sachs Asset Management and TVS Capital Funds with participation from Investcorp, Avataar Ventures and existing investor, LeapFrog Investments.
According to InsuranceDekho, this is the largest ever Series A round by an Indian InsurTech company.
InsuranceDekho was founded by Ankit Agrawal and Ish Babbar in 2016. Since its inception, the company has seen significant premium growth and aims to achieve annualized premium run-rate of INR 3,500 crores by March 2023.
The latest funding will be used to scale up InsuranceDekho’s product and technology functions, expand to new markets, launch new innovative products in the health and life categories, grow the company’s Micro, Small & Medium Enterprise (MSME) insurance business, strengthen its leadership team and pursue inorganic growth opportunities.
According to InsuranceDekho, India’s current insurance penetration is 4.2% of GDP compared to 12% in the USA and 7% globally. Additionally, almost 85% of India’s existing insurance premium is centred in the metros and Tier 1 cities.
InsuranceDekho is on a mission to change this, and to make sure people have access to insurance products throughout the country.
Aspire bags $100m
Aspire, a Singapore-based neobank serving SMBs and startups in Southeast Asia, has raised $100m in a Series C funding round.
The round saw participation from Lightspeed and Sequoia Capital SEA, Paypal Ventures, LGT Capital Partners and existing backers Picus Capital and Mass Mutual Ventures.
Founded in 2018, Aspire offers businesses a unified suite of financial services including international payments, corporate cards, payable and receivable management, accessible via a single, user-friendly account.
The company said it has quickly gained popularity in Southeast Asia, and recently tripled its annualized total payment volumes from over 15,000 businesses across the region.
The company said it will use the funding to enhance its product offering further and expand its regional presence, while increasing its team to continue to innovate in the space.
In 2023 the company plans to add more talent across the region and help further, build the SE-Asia tech ecosystem while maintaining a solid business model with best-in-class unit economics.
PhonePe, an Indian FinTech, has raised another $100m
The funding was raised by Ribbit Capital, TVS Capital Funds and Tiger Global. This new investment follows the recent $350m primary fundraise that closed on January 19 this year.
PhonePe started its latest fundraiser with a target of raising up to $1bn in capital, post its domicile shift to India.
With this second tranche, it has already raised $450m within six weeks from leading investors. The company expects further investments from leading global, as well as prominent high-net-worth Indian investors in due course.
PhonePe plans to use the new influx of capital to scale up its payments and insurance businesses in India and also launch and scale new businesses in lending, stockbroking and shopping and account aggregators over the next few years.
Taurus scores $65m
Taurus, a digital asset infrastructure provider, has scored $65m in a Series B funding round headed by Credit Suisse.
Also taking part in the round were Deutsche Bank, Cedar Mundi Ventures, Pictet Group, Inventis and Arab Bank Switzerland.
Taurus already works with more than 25 financial institutions and corporate clients in eight countries and three continents, including systemically important financial institutions, retail and online banks, private banks, crypto-banks, investment banks, and broker-dealers.
The funds, Taurus claims, will be used to support the firm’s growth strategy across three key priorities. These priorities include hiring top engineering talent to further develop its platform, get closer to clients and expand the sales and customer success organisation of its infrastructure solutions with new offices in Europe, UAE, the Americas and South-East Asia.
In addition, the funds will be used to maintain the firm’s security, risk and compliance requirements across product lines, organisations and processes.
CyberTech Descope pulls in $53m in seed funding round
Descope, a developer-first authentication and user management platform startup, has raised $53m in a seed funding raise.
The round was led by Lightspeed Venture Partners and GGV Capital and saw participation from Unusual Ventures, Cerca Partners, Silicon Valley CISO Investments, Dell Technologies Capital, Tech Aviv and J Ventures. A range of angel investors also took part.
Descope enables developers to add authentication, user management, and authorization capabilities to consumer and business applications with a few lines of code.
The platform offers different integration flavors based on developer preferences – from no/low code to well documented SDKs and APIs – to make it easier to deploy, maintain, and update user journeys across the application lifecycle.
Descope’s authentication and user management platform aims to make building passwordless authentication easy and intuitive. The platform allows organisations to create authentication flows and user-facing screens using a visual workflow designer, seamlessly add a variety of passwordless authentication methods to apps such as magic links, social logins and biometrics.
The platform also validates, merges and manages identities across the user journey, get business apps enterprise-ready with single sign-on, access control and tenant management, enhance user protection and prevent account takeover fraud, bot attacks on login pages and session theft.
Coincover scores $30m
Coincover, a Cardiff-based digital asset protection provider, has scored $30m in a funding round headed by Foundation Capital.
Founded in 2018, Coincover is the first and only service to guarantee digital funds will not be lost or stolen.
By combining insurance with the latest security features, we significantly reduce risk and make digital currency investments simple, safe, and secure for retail and business customers.
According to Finextra, Coincover already works with more than 300 businesses, from exchanges and wallets to hedge funds, family offices, and banks.
It also works directly with a number of digital asset custodians to help them keep their clients safe. Current customers include Fireblocks and Bitso.
The new funding, Coincover claims, will go towards recruitment, product updates and building partnerships.
Oligo Security raises $28m
Oligo Security, an application security and observability platform, has raised $28m after coming out of a stealth period.
The app security and observability solution enables enterprises to detect and prevent open source code vulnerabilities in their applications without affecting performance.
The funding was raised across seed and Series A funding rounds, with participants including Lightspeed Venture Partners, Ballistic Ventures, TLV Partners and a number of key angel investors, including former Google Cloud GM/VP Eyal Manor and Snyk CTO Adi Sharabani.
Oligo’s library-level analysis and behavior monitoring technology instantly identifies vulnerabilities in running packages and prioritizes fixes based on application context, saving expensive development time by focusing on the actual attack surface.
The solution also alerts only when there is a deviation from a library’s permission policy, indicating suspicious activity. Oligo claims its solution is fast and efficient by design, using a proprietary eBPF-based engine to precisely detect vulnerabilities and prevent attacks while maintaining application stability.
Oligo’s technology profiles the legitimate behaviour of each library, creating a knowledge base of libraries’ profiles and alerting or blocking whenever a library activity is not as expected. Working at the library level, the Oligo platform enables quick and effective performance while maintaining high stability of the application.
Shift raises AUD$27m
Shift, a provider of credit and payment platforms for Australian firms, has closed an AUD$27m Series C funding round.
The round was led by Sequoia Capital Southeast Asia. The raise comes on the back of a recent AUD$140m increase in its debt funding capacity following a recent growth period.
Shift has now provided more than AUD$2bn in tailored financial solutions to support the growth aspirations of Australian businesses since its founding in 2014.
These solutions include capital for growth, equipment finance, and trade payment solutions. The new capital will be used to further enhance Shift’s innovative suite of credit and payment products and deliver even more value to Shift’s network of broker partners, merchants and direct customers.
In addition to Sequoia Capital Southeast Asia’s participation, the Series C equity round saw the majority of Shift’s existing shareholders participate.
Shift said it expects to continue a strong growth trajectory in 2023 as businesses continue to grow and adapt in a changing business climate.
InsurTech OpenEyes bags $18m
OpenEyes, an InsurTech company serving commercial automotive fleets, has emerged from stealth with $18m in Series A funding.
The round was led by global software investor Insight Partners and Pitango First, with participation by MoreVC, which led the seed round together with Pitango First.
OpenEyes offers commercial automotive insurance to a variety of fleets. The company aims to offer more competitive rates by reducing the frequency and severity of traffic accidents.
The InsurTech’s technology enables fleet managers and safety officers to identify the sources of risk in their fleet, empowering them to implement practices that reduce the frequency of accidents.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) estimated that the number of people who died in motor vehicle traffic crashes in 2021 increased by 10.5% from 2020, the highest numbers of fatalities since 2005 and the largest annual percentage increase in history. In addition, OpenEyes said that studies by NHTSA show that large truck crashes are roughly three times more likely to result in injuries when compared to passenger vehicles.
OpenEyes said it will use the funding to fuel the development of its cutting-edge technology and to hire additional team members to support its increasing US operations. To date, OpenEyes has raised a total of $23m.
Landytech secures $12m
Landytech, the company behind investment reporting platform Sesame, has bagged $12m in Series B funding.
The round was led by an investment from Aquiline Technology Growth and additional investment from existing investor Adelie Capital.
Landytech’s platform, Sesame, enables its clients to streamline reporting processes and make more informed investment decisions via a complete suite of investment data, analytics and reporting tools.
It allows firms to seamlessly consolidate investment data across public and private assets, bringing it together on one platform. Its powerful analytics engine fuels decision-making by unlocking insights into performance drivers and detractors, along with exposures and risks, at portfolio level right through to individual assets.
Landytech claims the funding will accelerate Landytech’s growth as the firm expands internationally and support its product development.
AdalFi secures $7.5m to take on Pakistan’s lending challenges
AdalFi, a Pakistan-based digital lending infrastructure provider, has raised $7.5m in seed funding to tackle the lending challenges in the country.
The round was led by COTU Ventures, Chimera Ventures, Fatima Gobi Ventures and Zayn Capital alongside angel investors including execs from Plaid.
According to AdalFi, less than 4% of Pakistani consumers and businesses take bank loans. The company uses AI-powered credit scoring and underwriting models to power smart, instant loans for consumers and SMEs in Pakistan.
These include unsecured loan products such as term loans, credit cards and revolving finance facilities for consumers and SMEs respectively.
The AdalFi tech stack also includes pre-built, bespoke customer journeys and integrations with major banking platforms. AdalFi has quickly signed up 14 banks (including 7 out of the top 10), on its mission to promote financial inclusion as it unlocks access to credit to millions of people and small businesses.
The company’s proprietary technology scores the financial transaction data already possessed by banks, enables personalised digital marketing to qualified prospects and provides the customer journeys embedded within the bank’s digital presence to enable teal-time disbursement of loans.
Privilege access management platform Procyon scores $6.5m
Procyon, a privilege access management platform built for multi-cloud environments, has landed $6.5m in an equity financing round.
The round was led by Lobby Capital and saw participation from GTM Capital and First Rays Venture Partners. Alongside the funding, the company also launched the industry’s first PAM solution built for cloud-native environments.
Procyon claims it is redefining the conventional approach to privilege access management for developers and DevOps teams with a new model that meets their need for quick access to systems and applications while working across distributed teams to manage thousands of cloud services.
Procyon said its multi-cloud privilege access management platform offers self-service access, compliance and governance, strong device identity and zero-standing and just-in-time privileges.
Asset-Map bags $6m
Asset-Map, a premier financial advice engagement experience for financial professionals, has raised $6m in Series B funding.
Asset-Map is a Software-as-a-Process experience for financial professionals who provide in-person and remote advice in the wealth management, investment, and insurance markets.
Typically included as part of the financial planning engagement process, Asset-Map centers around the digital visualisation of household facts to build highly customised, design-thinking presentations in minutes that help advisors and their customers make better financial decisions.
With this latest financing, 41 family offices, CEOs, wealth managers, partners and board members have joined RGAx and SixThirty on Asset-Map’s cap table.
Asset-Map has now raised $7.6m in total funding since inception.
The company said this latest funding round will position it for sustained development in 2023 and beyond.
The capital will also allow it to scale its operational resources, further improve its sales and partnership capabilities, and execute its product and marketing strategies, in addition to fulfilling its long-term mission to elevate the financial wellness of millions of people globally.
Sikoia bags $6m to simplify customer onboarding
Sikoia, a London-based unified data platform and API marketplace for financial services, has raised $6m in a seed round to simplify customer onboarding.
The round was led by MassMutual Ventures (MMV) with Coalition Capital and existing investors Earlybird and Seedcamp doubling down on their commitment.
In an increasingly fragmented and often confusing FinTech service provider landscape, customer onboarding is difficult. Regulated businesses and financial institutions have to manually collect, validate and verify customer information across siloed sources.
According to Sikoia, this is a time-consuming process, which is also often costly and prone to errors. This can lead to delays in onboarding new customers and thereby risking fraud.
Sikoia is on a mission to help companies make better use of the data already available to them.
By unifying third-party data and APIs and combining automated workflows with a series of detailed analytics, Sikoia promises faster decision-making capabilities, increased efficiency, and reduced regulatory risk.
The round, which brings the total raised by the company to $8.3m, the capital will help fuel the company’s international expansion, deliver further data coverage and workflow automation, and develop unique technology to help its clients deliver exceptional client experiences.
Sikoia’s previous pre-seed round took place in August 2021.
ModernFi secures $4.5m seed funding
ModernFi, a deposit marketplace that connects banks with deposits, has scored $4.5m in a seed funding round.
According to Finextra, ModernFi operates a deposit marketplace that connects banks with excess deposits to banks that need funding. The round was led by Andreessen Horowitz.
ModernFi said its offering provides an outlet for excess deposits that helps banks manage balance sheet size and earn potential revenue. It also helps banks source liquidity and fund asset organisation.
ModernFi says it is already working with US-based banks ranging in size from $500m to $100bn in assets.
Latino-founded neobank Comun secures $4.5m seed
Comun, a neobank that provides modern banking solutions for members of the Latino community, has closed a $4.5m seed round.
The round was headed by Costanoa Ventures with participation from fellow investors FJ Labs and South Park Commons.
Comun said that it offers every aspect of the banking experience available in a Spanish-first experience, removing what it claims is one of the biggest hurdles for the Latino community in getting the financial services they need.
Comun provides Latino immigrants access to traditional financial services, including a checking account connected to a physical and virtual Visa debit card, direct deposits for payroll, and free ATM withdrawals and deposits but without requiring a social security number or any additional or hidden fees.
The firm plans to use the new capital to build a financial hub with expanded solutions and resources for Latino immigrants in the US.
Sandbox Banking lands $4.3m in seed funding haul
Sandbox Banking, a FinTech building a low-code integration platform for banking, has raised $4.3m in seed funding.
The strategic investment was led by Horizon Ventures and saw participation from SixThirty, Tuesday Capital and Forum Ventures.
Using the company’s Glyue platform, banks and credit unions can accelerate digital transformation using pre-built API adapters and solution templates to securely connect existing systems with FinTech partners.
Sandbox Banking’s API builder platform already supports teams at over 70 financial institutions across the US & Canada, including Bank Newport, Silicon Valley Bank, United Bank, Choice Financial, and Service Credit Union.
With deeper integrations into some of the largest global FinTech companies on the 2023 roadmap, Sandbox Banking will use this capital to accelerate hiring for new product development and solution delivery capacity.
Canadian insurance “super app” Goose Insurance nets $4m
Goose Insurance Services, a Vancouver-based “super app”, has raised $4m in Series A funding for its insurance offering.
The round was led by Axis Insurance Managers, with participation from Impression Ventures, Real Ventures, and Manchester Story.
Established in 2018, Goose aims to take the confusing parts out of buying personal insurance in Canada and the US. The company makes it easier for consumers to get the right coverage from a single mobile app.
The Vancouver-based company will use the funding to accelerate the adoption of its consumer-focused insurance super app in Canada and the U.S. through education and awareness initiatives.
Goose members can purchase over 19 different insurance policies across 30 states in the U.S. and 8 provinces in Canada including travel, renters, pet, critical illness, and up to 1 million of term life insurance.
Goose has expanded its product offerings by working closely with carriers like AIG, IMG, iA Financial Group, TeachersLife, and American Amicable. Goose was also recently appointed a coverholder for Lloyds of London.
Aura Network bags $4m to expand Web3 ecosystem
Aura Network, a company claiming to be building the internet of NFTs, has raised $4m in a round led by investors Hashed and Coin98.
The company noted that Aura’s fundraising efforts also engaged some notable blockchain projects, such as Republic Crypto, GuildFi, Istari Ventures and K300 Ventures.
Furthermore, strategic relationships with these investors and partners will provide advice on operations, product and business development, marketing efforts and more.
According to Aura, the funds are earmarked for its ecosystem expansion, including increasing the number of global Web3 projects and products built in its ecosystem.
The company added the its development team is currently focusing on building several new products as part of its ecosystem.
Kenyan FinTech Power lands $3m seed funding
Power, a Kenya-based FinTech provider, has scored $3m in a seed funding round led by DOB Equity.
Also taking part in the round were Bolt by QED Investors, Quona Capital, Zephyr Acorn, and Norrsken Accelerator.
Founded in 2020, Power allows workers to take control of their financial health by making a holistic set of financial services available to employees and gig workers across Sub-Saharan Africa.
The company helps individuals to access earned wages, streamline savings and investments to regulated partners, qualify for longer-term credit, and enroll in affordable insurance, so that workers can live with dignity, reduce financial-related stress, and take control of their financial well-being.
Power’s solution includes a mobile app for employees and workers, a workforce deduction management system for employers, and a digital core banking engine connecting into regulated financial service providers. Through the app, workers are digitally onboarded and verified and then have immediate access to the Power services.
According to Power, this investment will accelerate Power’s growth in Kenya and Zambia and deepen its presence across other countries in East, West, and Southern Africa.
In Kenya, Power engages customers directly and has already onboarded over 70 employers and gig platforms representing over 40,000 workers.
As it expands into new markets like Zambia, Power strategically partners with banks and lenders and delivers a white labelled Workplace Banking solution that is quick to deploy and can deliver digitized financial services to the workforces of companies that bank with Power’s partners.
BaaS innovator Omnio rakes in €9m
Omnio, an innovator in banking-as-a-service solutions, has scored €9m in an equity funding round.
Omnio supports other financial institutions and non-regulated enterprises with its Banking-as-a-Service model, which manages the complexity of offering retail financial products for leading consumer brands and financial institutions.
Omnio delivers a modular end-to-end solution that supports the accounts of record all the way through to operations, regulatory reporting and compliance.
It means that smaller financial institutions can compete with the big banks, and financial services can be embedded in customer journeys of leading non-financial brands allowing customers to transact, obtain financing or be rewarded for their loyalty.
Omnio builds on its pioneering Banking-as-a-Service offering, including its loyalty platform Domec and the Sercle business, the credit union platform, serving 135 financial institutions and over 1.5 million members of its credit unions, consumer brands and banking customers.
The impressive growth continues with significant clients wins which were recently signed in the travel, transportation and sports/entertainment sectors in UK and Italy.
VRRB Labs launches decentralized protocol and bags $1.4m pre seed
VRRB Labs, a decentralised protocol that combines speed, scalability and decentralisation, has landed $1.4m in pre-seed funding.
Investors in the company included Jump Crypto, Big Brain Holdings and Taureon.
VRRB leverages a unique, proof-of-claim consensus algorithm to achieve unmatched speed and scale, both vertically and horizontally. Additionally, VRRB implements a novel approach to smart contract DevOps and execution.
The VRRB smart contract platform isolates each smart contract in its own containerised runtime. Each program deployed to the VRRB network contains its own micro virtual machine, built to the specification of the program in focus. This provides developers with the ultimate flexibility, enabling them to build composable smart contracts on a language agnostic platform.
The firm’s seed funding will enable the company to further scale its development and marketing teams and build out an educational program for developers interested in building on VRRB’s platform.
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