As we march along toward the holidays and the end of 2022 – all I can say is, WOW, hat a year. And as we type this, it’s just been announced that Sam Bankman-Fried has just been arrested in the Bahamas and will be extradited to the US. Jaw-dropping, head-shaking times are these.
In the meantime, fintech VC keeps marching along, but the numbers are getting lower. This may be because of EOY, but maybe not.
Some trends worth noting:
- Just one firm this week topped $100M+ in funding – yet another digital bank out of the UK. There sure seems to be a WHOLE LOTTA digital banks in Great Britain. How they effectively compete is a mystery, but $122M is a significant funding round. Then again, funding rounds iof this size typically indicate firms are not yet profitable. Hmmm.
- A total mashup of fintechs this week were the funding winners – a hospitality payments platform, a digital bank, a proptech, a crypto market maker and a financial inclusion letnding platform.No trends at all in the winners – and maybe that’s its own trend. The lack of it,and the fact that no one sector is emerging as dominant.
- Finally, three of the deals were offshore – in the UK, Belgium and India – while just two were out of the US.
Without further ado, here are this week’s top 5 fintech VC deals for the week below, in order from highest to lowest funding levels.
1Allica Bank
$122M, Series C | UK | Digital Business Bank | TVC, Warwick Capital Partners, Atalaya Capital Management |
allica.bank/
LinkedIn Overview:
“Recently named by The Times newspaper as one of the UK’s Top 20 fintech companies, Allica Bank is dedicated to serving and supporting small and medium businesses and empowering them to succeed. We combine modern, powerful technology with local relationships in the community to deliver expert banking for businesses in Britain. We have offices in Milton Keynes, Manchester and London, and a team of expert relationship managers out on the road across England and Wales, providing personal support to small and medium-sized businesses in their local communities. In everything we do, we live and breathe our four core values of collaboration, integrity, delivery and being straightforward.“
2KreditBee
$80M, Series D | India | Digital Lending Platform | Premji Invest, Motilal Oswal Alternates, TPG-backed NewQuest Capital Partners, Mirae Asset Ventures, MUFG Bank | kreditbee.in
LinkedIn Overview:
“KreditBee is a FinTech Platform which offers instant personal loan to professionals, where they can avail loans up to ₹3 lakhs as per their requirement. With a strong focus on online tech-based and data-centric KYC, KreditBee envisions to solve the financial inclusion gap in the varied demographic segments of the country. The platform is backed by a Systemically Important NBFC Krazybee Services Private Limited, registered with RBI since May 2017, as well as various debt & platform partners. KreditBee is a brand of Finnovation Tech Solutions Pvt Ltd and is currently a Series-C funded entity with a cumulative fundraise of over USD 200 Million. It is backed by some key VC firms and investment entities like Azim Premji’s Premji Invest, Motilal Oswal Private Equity, TPG-backed NewQuest, South Korea’s Mirae Asset Venture, and US-based Alpine Capital. Some other marquee investors include ICICI Bank, Arkam Ventures and SIDBI’s investment arm IndiaSME Investments. Also, it has various debt partners like AU Small Finance Bank, HSBC, Fullerton, and IIFL. Currently, it has 5 million loan customers, out of which over 2 million are active loan customers.“
3Keyrock
$72M, Series B | Belgium | Digital Asset Market Maker | Ripple, Six Fintech Ventures, Middlegame Ventures | keyrock.eu
LinkedIn Overview:
“Founded in Belgium in 2017, Keyrock are cryptocurrency market makers building scalable, self-adaptive algorithmic technologies to support efficient digital asset markets. Through a combination of in-house algorithmic trading tools, high-frequency trading infrastructure and industry expertise, Keyrock provides unparalleled liquidity services to tokens, exchanges and brokerages within the cryptocurrency ecosystem. Keyrock operates with the vision of democratizing cryptocurrency liquidity through a strict dedication to transparency, operational integrity and regulatory compliance.“
4MarginEdge
$45M, Series C| Virginia | Hospitality Management & Bill Payments Platform| Ten Coves Capital, Fiserv, Derive Ventures | marginedge.com
LinkedIn Overview:
“From one picture to the big picture! It all starts with your team snapping photos of invoices with their smartphones. We take it from there – every line item and every handwritten note is captured. We then integrate with your POS, so each day you know everything you bought and everything you sold, plus you get a rolling P&L with drill-down capability, and the invoice and sales data flows effortlessly to your accounting system. In between, our solution: – handles data-entry of all of your invoices – updates pricing on your inventory sheets (food and beverage) – updates ordering sheets – keeps your recipes – prep and plated – prices up to date with a real-time kitchen recipe viewer – alerts you if the prices of key ingredients jump – determines theoretical food and beverage cost/usage vs actual We are currently working with over 3000 restaurants in all 50 states, from fast-casual to fine dining.”
5Setpoint
$43M, Series A | Austin, TX | Real Estate/Proptech | Andreessen Horowitz, Stonecroft, 75andSunny, Fifth Wall, 645 Ventures, NextView Ventures, LiveOak Venture Partners, Vesta Ventures, ATX Venture Partners | setpoint.io
LinkedIn Overview & Company Website:
“Setpoint’s platform is the foundation for real-estate innovation – unlocking speed, efficiency and accuracy for PropTech companies and their lenders…Setpoint’s platform automates the (real estate) funding lifecycle, so operators and lenders easily manage capital requirements.“
